As a high school student, academics can provide a lot of stress. With scheduling coming up at the end of January, students may worry over their course load the following year. The choices of classes vary drastically here at Oak Hills High School. This school provides amazing opportunities for all types of individuals and their interests. Two of those opportunities are College Credit Plus (CCP) and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. You may wonder which is better and what is the difference. In this article, you will learn the pros and cons of both courses, along with the differences and similarities.

CCP classes are offered to high school students at Oak Hills High School and on a college campus. At Oak Hills, 22 of these classes are available. Since it is a college class and the courses are typically run through a certain college to get into the class you also have to apply and get accepted into the college. At Oak Hills you could apply to Cincinnati State, The University of Cincinnati, and Sinclair Community College. CCP gives you college credit with one exception, that you pass the class with a C or above. That is the only requirement for college credit, you do not have to pass a test at the end of the course to ensure you pass, like you do with AP courses. However, taking on-campus classes is a good option if you want to get ahead before starting college and better prepare yourself. Naomi Tadesse, a Junior in high school who takes on-campus college classes at Cincinnati State, remarks that CCP “gives you a lot more college credit hours in a shorter amount of time.” While some may not choose this path personally, I think it is far better than AP considering the only way to get college credit in an AP course is to pass the test; however, with CCP you only have to pass the class with a C or above to gain credit. Which I believe is much easier to do and practically guarantees you college credit. However, a downside of taking these classes is that the college credit only transfers to in-state colleges since the only courses offered are through Cincinnati colleges. So taking these classes won’t benefit someone who plans to go out of state for college.

The other option provided is AP which Oak Hills offers 28 of these courses. As I stated above, merely passing an AP course is not enough. To get the college credit, you must pass an end-of-year exam covering the entire course’s content and get a 3,4, or 5 on the test to be considered passing. When asking junior Veda Ratliff who has never chosen to take a CCP course, why she decided to take AP over CCP, she stated, “I took AP over CCP mostly because I don’t want to go to college in-state and I know that any AP credit that I receive will transfer out of state.” For someone who wants to go out of state for college AP is a better option but also is harder. However, for someone like me who wants to stay in state for college, the CCP program is easier and therefore is the better option if you want to stay in state for college. Both of these courses provide wonderful opportunities for students, but there are some key differences that separate them from each other.