Could you please tell me how much weight would be given to the following as to making an application competitive:

AP exams
Dual enrollment at a 4-year university
Dual enrollment at a community college
CLEP exams

In other words, are AP exams or dual enrollment considered preferable for admissions, or are they considered equal? Does it make a difference whether the dual enrollment was done at a 4-yr or 2-yr college? And are CLEP exams considered less competitive than AP exams?

Thanks for your help!

None of those make you more or less competitive as an applicant. If you get credit for the course in any way, that affects your degree plan once enrolled, but you are not more likely to be enrolled because your credits come from AP vs CLEP vs dual credit. That being said, some advisors will suggest you accept or deny certain courses based on the major you're in. If you're going into engineering, sometimes it's best to take your math courses at A&M even if you were able to receive credit in another way.

Another thing many people were surprised to learn is AP courses don't necessarily make you more competitive. If you have a 4.0 with all AP courses, you aren't more competitive than an applicant with a 4.0 in the normal classes.

The extra AP points help you with GPA in many schools though which directly goes to class rank which is an entrance consideration.

As an example, locally at Consol you get 10 grade points added to your semester grade for calculation of grade points for AP courses. You get none for dual credit. A student making a 95 in AP history gets a 4.5 for the semester while a student making a 95 in dual credit history has a 3.5 for the semester. That can be a significant impact on class rank when you have mostly AP credits vs dual credits your jr and sr year in many school districts.

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Could you please tell me how much weight would be given to the following as to making an application competitive:

AP exams
Dual enrollment at a 4-year university
Dual enrollment at a community college
CLEP exams

In other words, are AP exams or dual enrollment considered preferable for admissions, or are they considered equal? Does it make a difference whether the dual enrollment was done at a 4-yr or 2-yr college? And are CLEP exams considered less competitive than AP exams?

Thanks for your help!

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I agree with the other responses; one type over the other shouldn't make you look more/less attractive as an applicant, especially since they're all considered more than "standard" classes. Look at what offers the highest GPA scale (at our local school, AP is on a 6.0 scale, dual credit is a 5.0 scale, and normal classes are a 4.0 scale, so a significant advantage exists if you take AP classes).

Also beware of which classes you take for college credit, and understand that there is a trade off. Some of the easiest classes at TAMU are those that most people take AP/DC in high school (like Junior/Senior year English, American/Texas history, Econ, etc) which means you will miss out on some easy A's! At the same time, you'll save a considerable amount of money taking them in high school and potentially guarantee your acceptance by higher class ranking.



[This message has been edited by AggieDiver (edited 3/13/2014 12:20a).]

Lone Stranger,

From the Freshman Information Sessions I was always a part of, they said AP courses do not make you more competitive. Perhaps that has changed? Or maybe it depends on the high school's grading scale? It's been about 16 months since I worked in admissions, but I remember it always shocking parents to find out the AP courses weren't necessarily advantageous for their student.

Thanks for the good information, everyone.

Everyone is making good points and I'll do my best to clarify a couple of things:

1. The type of coursework does not play a role in the admission decision. We just want students to meet our coursework minimums (4 years each of English, Math and Science plus 2 years of a foreign language).

2. Depending on the district, taking AP/IB/dual credit courses can influence the GPA which, in turn influences the class rank. TAMU does consider class rank and SAT/ACT scores when making the admission decision.

3. When taking dual credit it is critical to make sure you are taking courses that will benefit you in the long run. Many early college high schools tell students that all 60+ hours of dual credit will count and they'll only have 2 years of college left after high school. This is rarely the case at TAMU since we do not use a university-wide core curriculum. In other words, our Engineering students follow a different core curriculum than our Business students, etc.

All this being said, we still encourage/recommend students take the most challenging coursework available at their respective high school. If nothing else, it should help make the transition from high school to college easier/smoother.

I hope this helps!

[This message has been edited by TAMUAdmissions (edited 3/16/2014 2:43p).]

Thank you for those clarifications--that is very helpful!

Looking back on it I wouldn't take the AP exams.

I took one CLEP test at A&M and got 20 credit hours vs the AP test which only gave me maybe 9 (Spanish).

CLEP the English also which is nice. Basically CLEP> > > > AP and cheaper too from what I remmember. AP classes are good to prepare you for college but can lower your GPA and rank since they are more difficult.