<p>What do colleges consider the most rigorous course load?
[ul]
[<em>]Dual enrollment [at a full time 4 year university (NOT A community college)]
[li]AP[/li][</em>]IB
[/ul]</p>
<p>They’re probably equal. Colleges want to see that you’re taking the most rigorous course load available, including as many college-level courses as possible. They don’t really care whether you do DE, AP or IB, as long as you do one of them.</p>
<p>If you’re making the decision, AP is probably best. Not necessarily because of the admissions implications, but because it gives you the most convenience and flexibility. IB is good, but you have fewer course options. Also, people tend to say that it’s harder than AP, but doesn’t come with any admissions advantage. DE is really good if your school doesn’t offer many APs, it can really boost your GPA, and you can take more advanced courses in half the time of AP. I do DE. But there’s also a lot of hassle–forms to stay on top of, extra fees, trying to schedule courses when college scheduling is so different than high school. And it might look sketchy to colleges if you take a lot of DE classes when your school offers similar APs. The main plus about DE is that it can help you stand out by taking upper-division courses in your potential major.</p>
<p>It depends on:</p>
<ul>
<li>What college or university.</li>
<li>Which courses you are considering college courses, AP, or IB for.</li>
<li>Whether you may take college courses beyond the college freshman level.</li>
<li>Whether the dual enrollment courses are true college level courses (not courses which would be considered remedial at the college level).</li>
<li>Whether the dual enrollment courses are truly taught like the regular college courses (or are the regular college courses at the college).</li>
</ul>
<p>Note that many AP courses are year long high school courses that correspond to semester-long college courses (e.g. calculus AB, statistics, psychology, environmental science, the government ones) and some are only rarely accepted at all (e.g. human geography, physics B). So true college courses would be more rigorous than the “AP lite” courses.</p>
<p>IB HL courses have a reputation of being an enormous amount of work, but are not necessarily credited for much more than AP courses are by colleges.</p>
<p>Thanks @mmgirl and @ucb. I’m doing dual enrollment in real college classes and have already taken courses in the 2000-3000 level (Sophomore/Junior level). I would think dual enrollment would be counted as more rigorous considering you’ve already experienced what you’ll be doing for the next four years. I’ve always been curious about this matter, but I guess no one really knows besides the adcom for the particular college.</p>
<p>If the courses are fairly obviously more advanced than introductory or freshman level (e.g. multivariable calculus, intermediate economics, organic chemistry, etc.), then an admissions person looking at the transcript holistically should notice.</p>
<p>For admission-by-formula schools, you may want to check how they recalculate GPA, since they may count college courses with a bonus like AP and IB HL courses.</p>
<p>But one thing to check is to see if the colleges you will eventually attend will accept your college courses at least for subject credit and placement into more advanced courses so that you do not have to waste time and tuition repeating what you already know.</p>