<p>So I have been informed by our guidance counselor that our high school is only offering certain AP classes once a day, and this will affect my sons' schedule.</p>
<p>They can either take community college courses or step down a level to honors classes.</p>
<p>How does taking community college classes rank against the AP classes in terms of applications for semi selective private and public schools?</p>
<p>Does your particular community college have a good track record of transferring top students into top four-year programs? Some do, some don’t. I know you’re not talking about starting at CC and transferring, you’re talking about a high schooler, but it might give you some assurance of how those courses are viewed if the top kids out of your CC with the associates’ degree do transfer to top colleges.</p>
<p>I would not need to see a lot of evidence of that. Most people at a CC are not going to transfer to top colleges, for many reasons, including the fact that some of them only want the two-year degree, or are essentially unmatriculated, taking certain courses for enrichment. But if it does happen much at all, the classes there must be well regarded.</p>
<p>My son had no AP’s only honors classes and took physics at the CC (all the kids in his school did as CC was adjacent to his high school.) Lots of kids at his school took other classes at the CC, too. My son was accepted to all 9 schools where he applied and is at a top 25 LAC. His college gave him credit for the class. </p>
<p>Fieldsport…this student sounds like he would be taking community college courses to satisfy high school graduation requirements. He would NOT be a transfer student when applying for college as a high school senior. Courses taken concurrent with high school are not considered as ones that would make him a transfer. Plus, he won’t be a matriculated student at the CC.</p>
<p>Ff, I would suggest that you ask you HS folks how they weigh the grades. At our high school dual enrollment community college courses, or courses taken at the community college were weighed the same as honors and AP courses (which had the same weight at our school).</p>
<p>Check also whether your state flagship has articulation agreements with the CC, and which courses are in them, which can be an indicator of the quality of courses (even if the student is looking for schools other than the state flagship).</p>
<p>Taking some actual college courses may give the student a taste of how college courses are run – meaning much less hand holding and monitoring, requiring a greater level of self-motivation than high school (including AP) courses. Also, in many cases, a college course will cover material in a semester that a high school AP course will cover in a year (e.g. college calculus 1 in a semester versus high school calculus AB over a year).</p>
<p>How colleges look at CC classes falls into two categories - admissions and credit.</p>
<p>As far as admissions goes, the CC classes will likely be viewed as equivalent to AP classes with the added advantage that there will be a grade by the time most applications are due. Yes, HS gives grades, but they don’t translate to college credit until AP scores, and some schools are easy graders in AP classes despite a poor track record of AP test success.</p>
<p>Many colleges have a webpage you can go to where they have already evaluated courses for transfer credit. Look at the colleges you are applying to to see if you can find your CC on such a list.</p>
<p>An experience similar to emilybee’s</p>
<p>During her junior and senior years, my daughter earned about a year’s worth of credit on campus at the local CC, including 3 semesters of sophomore-level literature. We sent her high school transcripts and her CC transcripts as part of her college applications. The intent was never to transfer the CC credits, but only to take the most rigorous curriculum possible.</p>
<p>She was waitlisted at Williams and UChicago, admitted to Amherst and Harvard, and outright rejected nowhere.</p>
<p>FWIW</p>
<p>You need to be really careful with taking college classes, whether they’re at a community college or a state flagship. I’ve seen quite a few of my peers take college classes that were essentially useless, and might have even hurt them in the college admissions process. Community colleges are meant for people at all sorts of academic levels, and so they offer classes that are essentially high-school or middle-school level. Yet high schoolers take them and trick themselves into thinking they’re taking college-level classes. If you’re taking college algebra, for example, it will look really weird unless you go to a school that does not offer pre-calculus.</p>
<p>When I researched the issue in PA three years ago, I found that many selective colleges would not accept credit from community college courses IF the course was taught inside a high school building as a dual enrollment class. Most of the less selective colleges had agreed to accept the credits in any case. </p>
<p>It seems to be easier to use community college credit if the 4 year college you are attending is within the same state, because there are often streamlined agreements to accept credits. </p>
<p>Almost every college accepts AP credit, but some are restrictive in the scores they accept (such as needing a 5 instead of a 3) or limit the amount of credit that can be used. </p>
<p>Our D took 3 semesters of CC and found it prepared her very well for transferring to competitive USoCal. She had the same teachers and coursework as state flagship U, just smaller classes, more individual attention and lower tuition (as well as yummy food from the culinary arts program). </p>
<p>She did not find her CC courses to be lacking or watered down in any way. </p>