For admission to an Engineering under-graduate program, what core courses must be at AP/Honors levels vs. college-prep, or does it not matter?

1) Your kid's an eighth grader. This is definitely way too early to start worrying about college admissions. Better wait a couple years and let him socialize and get used to the American environment. 2) Have dreams about schools, but don't expect to get into them. Having just a huge amount of AP's and high grades and test scores is not enough to get into a top Ivy League school. You need talents, unique abilities, and strong communication skills to be even put in the "maybe" pile. For the last few years, many schools have gone into the situation that they could have admitted an entire other graduating class that would've been perfectly well-fit for the school. There are just so many people applying to schools that it is impossible to accommodate for all of them. 3) Keep your options open about different schools. Your kid's interesting in being a mechanical engineer, so take a look at various engineering schools. Look at schools that offer mechanical engineering degrees. But don't forget that admissions are very difficult everywhere and that it may be necessary to take community college courses after high school. That's totally fine, as those two-three years could be used to get required general education courses out of the way. There are also a bunch of other public state schools that offer perfectly good engineering degrees, such as UC's in California. 4) As for required courses, I would recommended to take physics, calculus, computer science, and possibly chemistry at the AP level or higher. Those courses will come no earlier than sophomore year (second year of high school). It is ridiculous to have freshmen do AP courses, so don't push it on your child to do that for social and mental reasons. If he/she's interested, take a look at local community college courses and see what's interesting to take. Usually they're better than high school courses and can count for credit. But make sure they can be transferred over to the high school before taking them. 5) SAT and ACT tests are just another requirement needed for schools to "filter" out students. Having a 2000 SAT score or a 30 ACT score is totally fine and there's not much use of getting an even higher score unless you really, really want to gloat about an almost-perfect score (which means nothing other than you can take the SAT and is not a measure of smartness). Take a look at the mid-50% scores that people at top-performing schools and see what their scores are; for example, NYU has 1890 - 2180 as their 50% scores. Work hard to get a high enough score, but don't stress too much about it. You will also need SAT II tests for Math and at least one science (preferably physics if majoring in mechanical engineering), and that is where it's almost required to have a near-perfect score. tl;dr: Don't worry about any of this until at least two years after today. Encourage to work hard in school and tests, but don't stress it over. Don't expect to get into top schools and have options open for many other, perfectly good schools.

If I may - you are parents of an 8th grader. Times change and so will his/her math ability. Plan for any and every college now and then develop an understanding of ability each year. If math is a strong suit aim for AP Math, Science courses. Regardless if college is the future your goal is either IB program or AP Courses with the concept of 2 in 9th grade, 3 in 10th, 5 in 11th and 12th. Colleges are competitive, therefore learn what you can of the PSAT, SAT and ACT programs. Make sure the school has a Mu Alpha Theta Club and be part of everything. If all goes according to your plan you have a chance..yet if your child learns he is not as good at math as you thought, then the above ideas will leave Liberal Arts colleges open for you.