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Comment by got2surf | Hacker News Reader

College courses are a great option too (my school district allowed "dual enrollment" where you could take anywhere from one to all of your classes at one of the local community or state colleges). There are definitely some cases where the AP equivalent is "harder", better taught, or better suited to high-school age students, though.

I agree that defining "advanced" is very challenging, and goes beyond just the academic as well. There's also something to be said for being academically engaged with people similar to you (ie - some (most?) high school kids may learn more from peers in a self-selected AP Calculus class than they would from a Calc 1 class at the local college taken by kids looking to fill a requirement).

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I remember my decision making process:

It seemed to me that if I took the dual/early enrollment college course that I would definitely get the credit, whereas the AP course would actually require far more repetitive homework, lots more class time (which I didn't want to do), and only then would I have a chance to qualify for college credit.

That's a no-brainer, in my book, but so many of my peers refused to follow my lead to the University when I tried to persuade them.

In spite of lots of sales training, I've never been a good salesman.

I know in California when I was in high school, it was free for high school kids to take community college courses. It was cheaper to take calculus at a community college because I didn't have to pay for the AP test. In addition, I knew it would automatically count as college credit, instead of the pseudo-credit you get for AP test results.

As an added bonus, I could compete calculus in a semester instead of a full year. It was way better for me.

I remember mine - I knew university was possible, but I had no idea how to get into the program. Latter it was explained to me that the school had to may for my classes so they would do everything they could to discourage students from taking that track without being obvious about it. They didn't allow any information to be in school, the guidance consular never mentioned it (not that I saw them).

By contrast AP was just a choice I could sign up for when choosing classes.

Exactly, they (the guidance counselors) did everything they could to persuade me not to do what was clearly, to me, in my best interests.

I do not have good feelings towards those people still to this day.

Of course, now I realize why when I asked him why he would discourage me, he repeated my question loudly for the rest of the guidance department to hear - he was covering his butt on the matter.

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