What do I need to know to transfer credits?

Answered

These AA programs for HS students are primarily designed to give a head start to freshman applying to in-state colleges that accept these credits only. They are not ubiquitous between colleges outside of your home state. In fact, many states have similar programs but again, they are meant to give Washington kids a head start to Washington colleges that are part of the program, or Texas kids applying to Texas schools that are part of the deal. If you are in Florida doing this for example you can't apply those AA credits to a California college or a New York one.

Secondly, if are applying to Top 25 schools, it's doubtful that they will accept many of these earned credits unless they are AP or IB classes and you met the threshold test score like a (4 or 5) for the APs or (6 or 7) for the IB ones. It's completely dependent on that specific colleges policies with regards to allowing incoming freshman to get college credit for their APs, IBs, DE or college credits. There is no rule that fits all for these sorts of policies. For example, if apply to Brown or Williams, they do not give credit for such courses. These types of classes will only be used to place you in the proper course, which might be a higher level math or science. Other colleges have a cap on how many APs can be applied toward the graduation requirements. For instance Vassar College allows between 2 and 9 total units depending on what kind of course it is out of the 32 graduation requirements. Therefore, you have to thoroughly research your college list to determine how much credit you will get. In most cases it will be between zero and 1 year.

The more prestigious and difficult the college is, your allotted college credit will be inversely proportionate. For example at MIT and CalTech, it doesn't matter if you have 5s on your STEM APs, for the most part, they want you to take all your core STEM classes over again. These would be your Maths and Sciences. You may get some credit for your language classes if you score a 5. At a school like Columbia University, there is a core curriculum of I think 33 credit units. I don't think anyone can waive those classes which have nothing to do with your major but required of all Columbia College students regardless of whether they are studying Engineering or Political Science.

I do however think some if not most colleges will look at your transcript favorably in terms of course rigor. However if someone applying from your city has say 12-15 APs and has 4.0 UWGPA in them and got 4s and 5s on the AP exams, that might "Trump" your college courses (unless they are also APs).

For 9th and 10th graders reading this, I highly urge you to take inventory of the pluses and minuses of embarking on a similar AA degree program at your school because it works out best if you stay in-state and attend the colleges that have partnered up with your HS to permit you to do this. Just because you get an early AA degree doesn't always mean you get to short cut your 4 year degree into 2 years at non-participating schools. Sometimes, it's better to take a curriculum that most successful admits at these top schools take. Remember that college admissions is NOT A MERITOCRACY. Just because you have more credits or an AA degree, doesn't mean you get much consideration by admissions officers trying to "shape their incoming class". I would argue that private boarding school students who take neither college credits nor many APs, IBs but their own rigorous curriculum have a leg up over everyone else because they are feeder schools in the Ivys and Elites. They have had a symbiotic relationship with the best schools in the country for 200-250 years in some cases well before there were things like APs, IBs, or standardized tests like the SAT or ACT.

Good luck and do some in depth research on what your best path forward needs to be.