Our other children took AP Eng and Gov’t but our last child is more interested in doing dual enrollment at Nova (comm. coll) for English and Government her senior year. Does it matter to UVA-is one considered better than the other when it comes to applying to UVA next year?
(I don’t know UVa’s policies for dual enrollment.)
In any case, I would look closely at the policies of all of the colleges where you may be applying. They vary greatly. From my research 3 years ago, 97% of colleges would grant AP credit, but some are stricter than others in scores they will accept and the amounts of credit they will offer. If you are going to an expensive college and trying to avoid a semester or two of costs, or trying for a joint 5 year bachelors/masters degree with a tight schedule, the amount of AP credit that you are eligible for can become extremely important. (Note - many UVa students with large amounts of AP credit choose to not graduate early, and instead take a double major.)
At that time, I found that many selective colleges would not give college credit for dual enrollment classes if they were taught inside a high school building. For that reason, I told my kids to only take AP classes in their high school. Also, the dual enrollment classes that were offered in their high school greatly limited the other classes they could take, because they were longer classes.
Our second year started UVA with quite a few AP credits and is doing a double major just as you mentioned. Our youngest is planning to apply to UVA (and Penn State) and is leaning towards dual enrollment just because she is so tired of a lot of the mess that goes on at the high school. Some of the stories…good grief! Her high school does offer them in house but she would not take them there-she would do them at the community college. I know Northern VA Comm Coll is considered a good community college and that’s where she would go. Instead of AP Eng and AP CoGo at the high school she’d like to do them at NOVA. She just doesn’t want it to hurt her chances when it comes time to apply to UVA. If that were to be the case then she’d just tough it out and stay at the high school all day.
Our personal experience was that it was both a plus and a minus overall (your mileage may vary) based on the policies of our individual school district. Our son had been 1st in his class his junior year. He knew he was going into engineering so instead of taking AP English and AP Biology, he did dual enrollment at our local 4-year university to take Calc 3 and Diff Eq instead (Calc 2 was the last math class offered within his HS). Unfortunately, our district would not weight the grades of advanced dual-enrollment classes above standard high school classes. They weren’t even weighted at an Honors level, much less AP. Even though he got A’s in upperclass college coursework, his HS GPA and class rank dropped comparatively to those around him and he graduated several places lower in his class. While he did receive transferred course credit at UVa for these classes - and he obviously did get accepted - he was in fact rejected from several other schools where the valedictorian of his class was accepted (their resumes were almost identical). he also received no scholarships, where the valedictorian received full-ride offers from several schools. So… he has no regrets from a UVa perspective, and it did not seem to hurt him for his UVa acceptance, but… it did make a difference in other areas.