External programs or dual enrollment classes?

So my school offers a partnership with the local county program for health careers. You can do 1-yr programs like biomedical tech exploration or CNA certif. or phlebotomy certif. They take 3 hours of your day (I have 6 hrs. in school day) and you get opportunities to shadow people in the field but you don’t get to do groundbreaking research or anything like that. You pretty much learn by getting assigned project things. If Im aspiring to top schools like UChicago, Northwestern, Cornell, etc., would they rather see that or some dual enrollment stuff at the local CC?

bump

This kind of CE in my kids school is very vocational, for kids who would not go to a 4 yr school. The academic kids aimed at your universities would take IB/AP. What is the most rigorous pathway in your school? That is the one you take when aiming at selective schools.

@Sybylia What is CE? I go to a not very well funded public school (we also have a bunch of kids doing the vocational stuff at a different branch of this program) and will have 5 empty blocks during senior yr. I’ll have already taken all the APs available to me (7). The most rigorous option I think would be to take 3 CC classes (though they have a reputation of not being very hard…) and then I’d get 2 empty blocks due to weird funding issue things. I thought this might be a better option because of the certif. that you get at the end.

Ask your GC which would give you the most rigorous tick. Your school only offers 7 APs and you have them all? Then I would look at college level classes over vocational pathways. You have no online options?

But if I go pre-med, would I eventually use a CNA or phlebotomy certif. at all in the future? No online options that parents or school is willing to pay for. Also, this is a new program that GC isn’t familiar with.

Hallo
Imho, you should concentrat in your HS curriculum and EC right now that are important for college application. Take the most difficult ap classes and get involved in ECs that are of interest to you and do well. Try to win awards that are regionally or nationally recognized. Whatever you do at community college level classes will not impress the adcoms from the colleges, especially those elite colleges and most likely will not be transferred. Otoh, it will hurt you if you did not do well. However, a certificate in Cna will help you in your future med school application, with that certificate, you can participate in patient caring activities while you are in college and that will become very useful EC for med school.

@artloversplus 1st of all sorry for all the questions. I’m trying to see different perspectives on this. So dual enrollment classes aren’t recommended because they don’t often transfer? I’m planning to apply to a BS/MD program too now so I think the problem is more towards actually getting in to a school. Would CNA or phlebotomy certification help in that?

If bs/md is in mind the health programs are more important for your medical ec, do not take cc courses.

In addition, please read threads in this section for bs/md application criterias

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/multiple-degree-programs/

@artloversplus Thanks!