In general I ' d say AP ' s are easier , but it depends on your learning style and the styles of your instructors . A friend of mine took an APheavy courseload in high school and says college is usually easier for him , just because there ' s less busy work and he ' s good at his major as opposed to the variety of subjects he took as AP ' s , which he wasn ' t equally good at . However , if you learn better through the more structured high school environment , or if you ' re only taking AP ' s in your best subjects , you ' ll probably find AP classes are easier than the equivalent college courses . I ' d also say it ' s generally true that college work is graded more harshly than AP work , but it ' ll vary by teacher or professor . I think most of why AP ' s are considered hard is because they tend to have a lot of assignments , and students with all or mostlyAP courseloads have to deal with piles of homework on a daily or neardaily basis . College courses don ' t generally have lots of assignments there ' s less daytoday pressure but papers and projects from different classes still often end up coinciding at various points in the semester . If you ' re good at time management , you won ' t have to stay up really late multiple times every week to get your work done . In contrast , if you have a lot of homework after getting home from a day at high school , students don ' t have much of a choice in staying up late .