AP Courses vs. Dual Enrollment

Test Preparation AP Test Preparation
1

<p>I come from a small school that offers five AP courses. I took two (World History and Biology) this year, my junior year, and so far I’m scheduled to take two more next year (Calc AB and Lang). The one that I’m not taking is Psych; instead, I’m dual enrolling at my local c.c. I’ll be able to get more credit by taking two college courses instead of one AP, and I won’t have to deal with the stress of the exam at the end of the year. My question is, how will the rigor of c.c. courses look next to an AP when submitted to schools like Northwestern, NYU, Carnegie Mellon, etc. Here’s my schedule from this year and next for context. Besides the AP/c.c. thing, I’m taking the max course difficulty (besides band, of course, but I want to be a music major).</p>

<p>Junior year
Band
Honors Eng 11
AP Bio
AP World
Pre-Calc
Physics</p>

<p>Senior year
Band
Freshman band (1 semester)/Dual enrollment (1 semester)
AP Lang
AP Calc
Dual enrollment
Dual enrollment</p>

2

<p>If your grades are good, schools like NYU, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon will typically accept your DE classes. For your AP courses, the listed schools will likely require 4’s at the minimum, though I’m not willing to look that up to be sure. Dual-enrollment is generally looked upon in the same manner AP is, whatever manner it may be. By that, I mean that the two typically go almost hand-in-hand and are viewed as containing the same rigors.</p>

3

<p>Thanks. My counselors don’t really deal with students that want to go somewhere besides the community college or a state university, so I’ve kind of been feeling around in the dark on this one. You’re right on the only taking 4’s or 5’s, that’s one of the reasons I was cautious about taking an AP over a college course.</p>