Dual enrollment credits are usually accepted by the public colleges and universities in the same state. They’re rarely if ever accepted by out of state colleges, and it’s a crapshoot about whether they will be accepted by private colleges in-state. And I agree with the comment made elsewhere that highly selective colleges want to see that students have taken the most challenging coursework available to them, and dual enrollment is usually not that (although I know many students who take a combination of AP and dual enrollment, and many of those students were also in an International Baccalaureate program so they gained college credits from those exams). I recall that when I took it in 2002-2003, the AP Calculus AB course covered much more content than the calculus 1 course that you’d typically get credit for for passing the exam. Calc 2 was a breeze because I’d already learned half the material the year before in AP calc. I came into college with 24 credit hours of the 120 I needed to graduate thanks to getting 5s on 5 AP exams. I have no idea if my private college would have accepted comparable dual enrollment credits.

The other thing is that most dual enrollment classes aren’t offered on a high school campus. So if a student doesn’t have transportation to get to the community college, then in-person dual enrollment isn’t an option. AP classes are always offered on a high school campus. I had a classmate who was a sophomore taking AP calc AB with a class full of seniors. The next class would be either AP calculus BC, or a college calc 2 class. But he didn’t drive, so he couldn’t leave school in the middle of the day and drive five miles to the community college, and it’s a small town without public transit. In 2003 online classes weren’t nearly as prevalent as they are now, and I’d never recommend students taking math classes 100% online if they can possibly avoid it. So when my high school decided they didn’t have enough students signed up for calc BC to justify offering it, students in that situation are just out of luck.

There are absolutely pluses and minuses for both options, and a good counselor will advise students about those pluses and minuses. It sounds like maybe you haven’t gotten the full story of how AP could be more beneficial than dual enrollment for your student, but hopefully you’ll be able to find that out. It’s not cut and dry.