Different perspectives here:
1. AP courses aren't generally up to the standard of a course at a good private college. I studied history and chemistry at a small liberal arts college. All my history classes involved reading a lot and writing a lot. The AP exams are largely structured around memorizing stuff. Even after the redo, they have 55 multiple choice questions counting for 40% of the grade.
Memorizing facts after about ~6th grade isn't learning history, and if I was a faculty member, I wouldn't accept an AP history class for college credit. Ditto for AP English for the same reasons. It looks like AP physics is algebra based, so that's out for STEM types. Etc.
They would take the AP Physics C exam, which uses calculus. The available AP exams are listed at
https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/apcourse . For physics there is
AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism
AP Physics C: Mechanics
AP Physics 1: Algebra-Based
AP Physics 2: Algebra-Based
