How early to start working on college credits?

[cookderosa]

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.

And CLEP offers subjects not available through AP: All the General Exams (College Math, Social Science, Natural Science, English Comp, Humanities) plus Analyzing Lit, American Lit, Human Growth Dev, Edu Psych, not to mention the LOWEST AP math is Calculus - leaving College Math, College Algebra, and PreCal on the table. Plus, it is harder to accumulate many credits via AP.

For instance, assuming a PERFECT SCENARIO, you would be able to (1) locate a high school that offered every exam and (2) allowed you to sit all exams. If that happened, you could still only take the exams they offered in their time. For example, you couldn't take Biology AND Music in the same year. You would have to choose between Spanish OR Computer Science. And based on the intensity of the exams, I think someone passing 4 exams in 1 year would be considered "extraordinary" by any measure. The average Ivy League student only takes 7 AP courses their entire high school career - the chances of using AP to test out of an AA is slim to none- you have to do other stuff like dual enrollment and or CLEP. Anyone, otoh, can test out of an AA using CLEP in 2 years.