I do see this as a difference between high school now and high school as it was. I went to a privileged public high school, and AP Physics and AP Calc were available to me. I did not take them, because I knew I would find them very hard (and I wasn't interested). Not many students did--these were known to be very difficult, hard-core classes for serious math/science nerds. I also was not encouraged or pressured to take them, because everyone knew my skills lay elsewhere. In fact, I took only two AP classes (English and History). I still got into very selective colleges. IIRC, I didn't even take the AP History exam. (I took the English one because it allowed me to place out of freshman English.)
Today, I assume that I would have HAD to take a whole slew of AP classes in everything, and that they would have been dumbed down to suit me and other less capable students.
