How much more favorably are AP classes viewed over Concurrent Enrollment courses?

Answered

APs and IBs are definitely weighed more than Concurrent Enrollment courses and there is a practical answer.

For example at my previous HS, we had CE/DE courses with a small local community college for all our language courses. So if you took Spanish, French, Chinese level 1, 2, 3 you could get CE/DE credit as well. But once you took AP Spanish,AP French, AP Chinese, CE/DE wasn't available. So students were getting CC college credit sometimes worth 24 college credits for Level 1,2,3 languages. Therefore in this example, taking AP Spanish, French or Chinese would be a much harder class like level 5. And it would be harder to get an A in the class and harder to get a 5 on the AP test. Therefore at my previous HS, CE/DE was over-rated vs. APs.

So not all CE/DE credit is as rigorous as college admissions officers would like to see. So if you are submitting a bunch of CE/DE credits that is not as difficult in course material as the APs or IBs, then you are not going to look as impressive that those applicants who have say 10 APs or full IB diploma.

The other aspect is that since APs/IBs are standardized, whether you take AP Calc in Africa, Korea, Canada, Honduras, doesn't matter. It's the same class. But CE/DE course material varies from college to college and the deal they struck with the HS they are collaborating. So if your HS does a CE/DE deal with UC Berkeley, that is way different than getting at CE/DE class with a small community college in West Texas.

Hope this answer helps you and clarifies things for you.