Eldest Daughter is doing dual enrollment now. As a homeschooled 11th-grader she's eligible to take her pre-calculus at the county community college. Her lady professor, not long out of grad school herself, loves Eldest Daughter because E.D.'s performance in the class is just smoking the college-age guys who are attending full-time.
It's amazing what simply paying attention and working hard can accomplish.
We homeschooled through 9th grade, then he took all classes at Community College, and I was glad because my head would have exploded if I had had to teach higher maths. We made it through Saxon Alg II, but my eyes were crossing at that point, LOL. In our state, with dual credit you have to test into College Alg. level, and evidently, by the time they’ve finished Saxon Alg II, they’re ready because he didn’t have a problem getting into the program.
In our state (Iowa) if the “equivalent” course is offerred at the public school, then the course is not paid for at the college.
Since we have a full slate of AP courses, this means very few college courses come under the state funded option.
Unfortunately our own state universities will not recognize the AP credit for various degrees (such as engineering), but will recognize the equivalent community college credit.
Also you really want the course and not the AP credit on your transcript for consideration to medical school. Might not be as big a deal for something like Chemistry since you will be taking Organic as well, but for Math and Physics - I am leery of the AP option.
My son made a point not to mention to his fellow students that he was a fifteen year old dual enrollment student when he was setting the curve in his math classes. ;-) He's in grad school at Stanford now, not my favorite choice politically, but we are very proud of his success.