Dual Enrollment at Community College, or AP Class in High School?

<p>I have an opportunity to take an actual college course at a local community college, but to dual enroll, I must drop a class from my current high school schedule (the way my credits are working out, it would have to be an AP class).</p>

<p>Which would look better on my app?</p>

<p>AP most of the time. If you do well on the AP exam, it would particularly look good. CCs vary from school to school. The AP course and exam are constants.</p>

<p>I have the same question as you,
Which one looks better in my application and they have told me that AP classes are harder.
Sent from my HTC VLE_U using CC</p>

<p>An AP course is an intensive high school course that prepares you to take an exam that is designed to evaluate whether or not you have learned material that is equivalent to an average introductory-level college course in that subject. Depending on your exam score, and the college/university you ultimately attend, you may or may not get course credit or advanced placement.</p>

<p>A community college course is a real, true college course that will give you real true college credits that will transfer to almost any college or university in the US. There are a few that will not accept these credits because the course was taken in high school, but those also are most likely to be the same institutions that won’t award credit or placement for AP scores. If you know now which colleges and universities are likely to be on your list, you can check that out.</p>

<p>All that said, I would encourage you to investigate the details of both the dual-enrollment course and the AP course that you would be choosing between. Which of these courses is more interesting to you? What other demands do you have on your time? Will it be easier to complete the requirements of one of them? Does the AP course run for the whole year, or just one semester? What about the dual-enrollment course? Would that give you the option to take two dual-enrollment courses in different subject areas over the course of the year? Ask around. What do students at that community college (and students at your high school who have taken dual-enrollment courses) have to say about the specific class(es) you are thinking about?</p>

<p>It depends on the specific courses.</p>

<p>Taking a transferable-to-the-state-flagship dual enrollment multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations course instead of AP human geography or other “AP lite” course that is unlikely to give much credit at a four year college makes sense.</p>

<p>Taking a non-transferable dual enrollment course instead of AP English literature or AP calculus BC does not make much sense if your goal is to prepare for going to college to study toward a bachelor’s degree.</p>