As I pointed out earlier, telling the OP what to do based on YOUR kid’s experience, and the college YOUR kid enrolled in is really not fair. This is going to be highly localized.
None of the college’s within easy commuting distance of me allows a DE kid to enroll in advanced classes, and none of them have the reputation for rigorous teaching that some of the HS’s in the area have. So to trade off a tough, thorough, well taught AP course for a mediocre freshman course at an open enrollment university doesn’t seem worth it.
Again OP, YMMV. You need to talk to local people who understand your local options, not a bunch of strangers opining from thousands of miles away.
I agree that in some areas students do not have access to DE and in some schools APs can be not of the best quality too. I think OP has options of DE (otherwise there would be no post)
and absolutely need to learn from qualified adults, counselors and college admins about the value of local DE classes and their transferability to local univerisities.
And given that OP considers 4-year school DE classes, transferability will be identical to the one of any transfer student in the US. So in case of OP, situation is a bit different. It is more like that:
will a potential school take me and my college classes at the same time and give me a freshman scholarship - that varies for private schools! In case of public schools they most likely take you as freshman and will transfer credits like for any transfer student.
Our experience some school may say (case of Union College -private) - we can take all your classes but will consider you a transfer student and will not give you a scholarship or we will take only 2-3 classes and give you a scholarship and consider you are freshman… DD opted not to apply to Union because of that policy.
How many of my classes will be accepted and what will not transfer (depending of school and major)?
To echo @blossom this advice does not generally apply, as I have mentioned a few times above. When I told you that my son found out that DEs don’t work at his college, that was Princeton. We are not going to not apply to Princeton simply because they don’t consider DEs. That would be silly. I wouldn’t be surprised if Harvard is the same way. etc.
You are most likely correct - that is why I said above not for private schools.
But I doubt that conversation here is about Princeton, Harvard or Stanford.
However, even private schools will take transfer credits. But not very top private schools.
We haven’t asked the OP which schools (that he is going to apply into; not his local school where he taking the DEs) the conversation is about :-). Indeed he hasn’t told us. Anyway the guidance doesn’t broadly apply.
both of my girls took DE classes. Precovid my oldest took two years at a college campus with other students), my other daughter did one year plus few more but due to covid her classes were primarily synchronous at home with all college students). Neither took AP.
Both of my girls still participated in high school activities. They still could go before/after school, have lunch there if it fit their schedule etc. They had the benefits of high school guiance counselors as well as whatever they chose to use at the college. My youngest was able to take high school choir which met at 7:45am before her college classes.
Based on your other post about classes -they still had to take anything they needed for high school graduation such as math every year, English every year etc. They had to finish classes like gym and health which they did before doing full time dual enrollment - basically it did not exempt them from anything plus guidance still made sure they were on track for college vs just high school grduation.
Both ended up in private colleges and received freshman merit scholarships. There credits were accepted after they accepted and paid or the school but beore classes started. Before the official matriculation colleges would give ideas on what they would accept but not on an official level… Some creidis simply had no use and were just unneeded free electives. After fulfilling high school graduation requirements and college needs they were free to take what they wanted and for them none of those classes had ap equivalents (like there is no AP accounting, AP criminal justice etc). Neither got an associates because that 1 did not interest them and 2 it allowed them to take some classes to explore potential majors etc. In addition the classes were all free including books.
I think you really would benefit from talking to your gc to understand what you need to do if you do the de route. Assuming you are taking the classes on campus how is transportation to/from your high school. Will you miss things like lunch with friends. I would also highly suggest as you get closer to applying you contact various colleges you are interested to ask them questions but what applies to one college may not apply to other colleges. Also if your de classes are held on your high school with other high school students several colleges do consider that to be different than taking college classes on a college campus with other college students.