My school offers somewhere around 15 AP classes. Of those 15, I will have taken 5 by the time I start applying for colleges next year. However, many of my classmates will have taken ~10 APs by the time they graduate. Part of why I have less is because I did my first two years of HS at a school that didn’t offer APs. Also, I only have taken APs that I know I will get an A in–those being English, history, and psych, rather than math and science, which aren’t my strongest subjects, while some of my classmates take all the APs they can and end up with more than a few B’s. I want to apply to competitive schools but I feel like my lack of APs will weaken my competitiveness among my peers when we all apply next fall, so I’m enrolled in two college classes at my local community college this summer to make up for the lack of my APs.
My question is, does college credit look better compared to AP, or are they weighted equally? I don’t know of any of my classmates who are also dual enrolling over the summer like I am (although I’m sure some are). My high school also has this program where seniors are able to pick a field (medical, business, engineering) and do that for 3 hours of the day and get college credit for it, and many of my classmates are doing that.
Would competitive colleges see my application as weaker than the rest, or would my two college classes bump up my application? Or would it help me if they knew that I transferred from a high school that didn’t offer any APs?