Which is better for the application - NZQA scholarships or AP?

Scholarship subjects vs taking AP in terms of university admission?

AP is not very useful if you have a levels or IB already. Scholarships are better because even if you don’t get into America you can get money from scholarship exams. Also if you do well in your scholarship exams and get “Outstanding Scholar” or “Prem scholar” that would be good for your academic awards section too. But if you’re considering placing out of entry classes in college, APs might be more useful than scholarships.

AP can also be useful if you are applying for early round - during the early round your external results are not out yet, so you only receive predicted grades which can be quite fluffy. When you sit your APs in May you can apply with your ACTUAL AP grades in November. For the RD round, you are suppose to send in your actual A level results in, but not many do unless they do just as well as their predicted grades (which is often not the case, and that’s why actual grades are always more useful than predicted grades).