Dual Enrollment Vs. AP classes?
It is 2025, and highschool students at AHS are approaching registration time for the 2025-26 schedules. Many students have to make a hard decision on whether they want to take Dual Enrollment classes or AP classes. A dual enrollment class is a class that allows highschoolers to earn college credit while working on their highschool diploma, an AP class is designed to introduce college classes to highschoolers, and to help them gain college credit before graduating highschool. It is a hard decision to make, as far as which course will have the better outcome on their college applications. Each class is different but both have benefits of their own that students may prefer.
Some students are very influenced that dual enrollment is the way to go. Junior Krish Patel said, “Dual enrollment is better for me. For some courses it is better to take dual enrollment because it can help more with certain courses and for me it happened to be more effective than AP.” Emma Reed, another Junior at Armuchee High School said, “I like Dual Enrollment better because for me it provides better learning opportunities and it can really help my GPA. ” These two Juniors agree that dual enrollment is the better option when it comes down to making the decision between AP or dual enrollment, but others don’t always agree.
Sarah Perry, a junior at Armuchee highschool said, “AP is the better choice, because you can learn more, and it’s hands-on learning so it is better for preparing you for college.” To bring in another opinion, Adalyn Smith, a freshman, said, “I think that AP is better because it offers more subjects and classes, and it is just better for your college applications.” Adalyn reasons that AP classes can provide more learning opportunities than dual enrollment, which could increase the chances of acceptance into colleges.
Though AP and dual enrollment are both beneficial when it comes to college applications, they both also have their faults. Sarah Perry who voted for AP said, “Some things that I don’t like about AP classes is that they are so much work and all the tests line up together which makes it hard.” Adalyn Smith agreed saying, “AP tests are really hard and a lot of the time the test and the answers don’t make sense.” Ap classes may have their faults but so does Dual enrollment. Emma Reed said, “Some negative things about dual enrollment are that the classes are really difficult to understand and might not always make the most sense, so it is really difficult and it is an online class so it is hard to get help.” AP and dual enrollment classes may be a lot of help, but it seems that they can be a lot of work as well. So the question is, which one is worth the work? AP or dual enrollment?
