For many high school students, sitting for the AP tests is a make-or-break proposition. One test at the end of the year is worth months of hard work paid forward in the form of college credit. Increasingly, though, students are turning to dual enrollment, an option that enables high school students to enroll in college courses and collect credit without staking everything on a singular test.
Dual enrollment courses enable students to experiment with college-level education while in high school. Instead of taking a final exam at the end of the year, students get their grades in the middle of the semester, much like they would in an actual college course.
Sophomore Sofia Handlong is also a fan of dual enrollment because it eliminates the stress of having to depend on one test score. “Dual enrollment is better because there’s not a lot of pressure on just that one single test. As long as you do well in the class, you get college credit. It’s more logical than memorizing everything at the end of the year for one exam.”
She also added that dual enrollment keeps her engaged throughout the semester. “It kind of feels weird to take one test on all the material,” she said. “I feel like it makes more sense to just take tests and do assignments as you go, as opposed to trying to remember everything at once.”
For other students like senior Mac Wall, dual enrollment is not only merely less stressful, it is also more convenient. Wall said, “I’m a bad test taker. It doesn’t really matter how much I study for something like an AP test. I almost always flunk it.”.
Wall also encountered a personal experience that changed his outlook. He said,”I got sick during my AP test. You can’t reschedule it, so that one day basically set my grade. If you get sick any other day, fine. But if you get sick that day, you lose credit for a year of work. That made me realize dual enrollment was smarter.”
As more schools expand their dual-enrollment programs, students like Handlong and Wall show why the program is a popular alternative to AP. It’s not just about earning college credit for them, it is about having confidence and capability to go with it.
