• AP tests are well known nationally and are uniform across the nation
• You can look on any college’s website and see what credit you will get for what scores on the AP tests
• AP Courses are given at your High School
• AP Credit is based on a test you take on one day
• AP courses generally are more spread out…e.g., AP Calc AB = Calc 1 is given over a year, not a semester.
DE
• There are more of a variety of DE courses available at a CC
• DE courses will count for your college GPA…make sure to do well for future Med school/grad school purposes.
• DE Courses may be only available at the CC…how will you get there? How will they overlap with your HS schedule?
• Private and Out of State Colleges may or may not give you credit. They may not give credit for courses taken to fulfill HS requirements. You do not know what credit you can get ahead of time.
• DE Credit is based on your grades over the semester (including final)
While some schools may use the dual enrollment GPA it actually is pretty common for schools that are not in the same system (cc to instate schools) not to use the GPA. They just give credit but your gpa starts from scratch. This was the case for all non in state schools we looked at. However the dual enrollment grades will be seen when applying to grad schools etc…
Would college admission penalize a student taking Calc 1 DE on a college campus over taking AP Calc AB at school JR year? My son’s Calc AP teacher does not have a very good track record so he is trying to avoid.
@sunnytimes It would be best to take AP Calc BC if offered. If not, the calc 1 DE makes sense assuming he will take calc 2 DE second semester. It would be more advantageous to take AB if either his calc 1 DE takes an entire year or he does not plan on taking calc 2 DE.
In my school, if you take a course in a community college, the grade you receive is unweighted and goes on your high school transcript. Is it still worth it to take community college courses? Will they look good to colleges?