<p>Do they carry the same weight as AP classes?</p>
<p>When you have a choice, take your high school’s AP classes. They will carry more weight than equivalent (and even superior) community college classes – if only because they are an integral part of your high school experience.</p>
<p>It really depends. If you are taking high school level classes at the college, not so much as those are “remedial” classes on the community college campus. </p>
<p>The idea is you take community college classes that aren’t offered at your high school either because you’ve advanced past the high school curriculum or because they don’t offer classes in your particular interest. Or, if you ran out of room on your schedule to take language, for example, getting it in the evenings at the college isn’t a bad idea.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, dual-enrollment, AP, and IB courses are all used as evidence that you are pursuing a rigorous plan of studies.</p>
<p>If your school doesn’t offer any AP or IB classes (or very few), and you want to take an equivalent course at the community college that can be a very good use of your time. If you have a very clear career goal, and you are able to load up on free or cheap CC credits while in HS (some students complete a full AA or AS degree), and thereby skip straight into junior-level coursework once you get to college, that can be a very good plan too.</p>
<p>As with AP and IB exams, each college/university that you apply to will decide for itself which CC courses to give you transfer credit and/or advanced placement for. Again, if you know your target college/university, you can plan your CC coursework accordingly.</p>
<p>Personally, I prefer real, true college courses (whether offered at a CC or at a 4-year institution) to high school level courses that are designed to prepare you for an exam that might or might not result in you receiving college credit (AP and IB). But others have different preferences (see fogcity’s post above). Sit down with your guidance counselor, and find out what the experience has been for students with interests and goals similar to yours in past years. In some cases the AP vs dual-enrollment decision will depend on factors that are specific to one student’s case.</p>
<p>Happymom… I agree. My eldest is in an early college program where she takes almost all her classes at the community college for duel credit. She feels she’s learned and grown far more than she did in the traditional AP system she was in prior. Her courses are free and if she goes to a UC or CSU, she’ll be done with her lower-division general Eds. Of course, she’s looking at privates too for which the rules seem to be pretty even in regards to AP vs. Duel. They will either give credit to none of either or they will give credit to some.</p>
<p>I do think it wise to take classes that matter to you as opposed to stressing whether one looks good over another. If it’s AP so be it. If it’s duel enrollment, that works too. I’m not sure how it looks if you opt out of courses offered at high school for CC versions but a good schol counselor should have some insight on that. We’ve seen kids go off to top colleges with all sorts of different transcripts.</p>