How early to start working on college credits?

[dfrecore]

I agree with the earlier comment that there is a great variety between the sates so that it is hard to make a blanket statement for some of these things (such as AP being a benefit over CLEP). I also agree that it is much more convenient to take a CLEP than an AP test. The state colleges here accept AP and CLEP, so I don't see an advantage of AP over CLEP here. The OP should check policies of state schools (if that is the most likely option) to see if there is any advantage of one over the other.

One of the advantages of AP is that they offer some exams that CLEP does not. Things like Art, Art History, Music Theory, European History, Physics, Chinese, Latin, Italian, Japanese.