I am an incoming high school sophomore, and I am looking forward to enrolling in AP classes and possibly dual enrollment during my junior year. The clarification I am lacking is, what does dual enrollment do for universities and what does AP do? What are the drawbacks and benefits of each? Will I have a harder time getting into a competitive school with or without one?
First if your goal is acceptance into college they both are considered highly favorable to many colleges.
If your goal is credit then you need to evaluate school by school.
Colleges might
1 give no credit at all
2 give credit as free electives that are not necessarily needed
3 give credit for a class then you have fulfilled the requirement
4 give credit but require you to take a similar class at a higher level
AP - colleges often list what they give credit for and what score is needed
dual enrollment - colleges may require a specific grade usually C and up then beyond that they get to decide if they will accept a class - typically they need to have a matching class to accept it - so if you take history of lake xx as one of your classes less chance of acceptance than if you take world history to 1500. In general colleges will not guarantee anything until after matriculation but they often have a way to look up what has been accepted from your dual enrollment college in the past. However there can be specific requirements such as they do not give credit for college classes needed to fulfill a high school graduation requirement, some will not give credit for classes taught at your high school to only high school students but will if they are taken at a college campus with other college students etc.
APs are more standardized
Dual Enrollment may work easiest if you go from say a community college to a state college in the same state. However that doesn’t mean other state schools or private schools do not accept them just that you need to check out all schools you are interested in individually.
I can tell you I contacted tons of admissions in both in state out of state public and private at all levels all over the East coast (except Ivy league) before letting my daughter do dual enrollment only (early college) for two years. They all assured me it wasn’t a concern and she got accepted into all the colleges she applied to and ended up at a private school that accepted the vast majority. She ended up graduating in 3 years this May. You don’t even need to graduate early though - it can give you time to explore some fun areas, add a 2nd major or minor, lower your course load, give you time to make things easier like study abroad or an internship etc.
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