I noticed this when I went to RPI (I graduated HS in 2007). My high school wasn't ranked at all (or at least no one cared where it was ranked) and AP courses we

I noticed this when I went to RPI (I graduated HS in 2007). My high school wasn't ranked at all (or at least no one cared where it was ranked) and AP courses weren't offered until after I graduated. Based on reports from my younger sister, the AP curriculum they did add later seems to have restricted what was taught due to the scheduling rigidity rather than improving it. (Students could take the AP tests on their own though.) I found that I was far more ready than many of my fellow students for math in college (though this could also be due to aptitude given my handle, even the physics and chemistry in my high school went further than AP curriculum). I attribute this to MathCounts (sadly just a 7th/8th grade thing) and the accelerated math track a friend and I were allowed to take. This track ended up getting us calculus concurrently with physics which made a lot of things there make way more sense and gave examples of real use of calculus outside of the math classroom. I also ended up taking statistics which I found more interesting/useful than calculus at the time (possibly because my intuitions weren't as applicable).