Most competitive colleges require at least 5 AP classes to even be considered for admission.
I have yet to find a single college that will not take a student who first gets their associates degree through a community college and performs well at that level.
I was on a jury a few years back (circa 2004) with a physics professor from UC Irvine. Over the course of the trial we ate lunch together and he expressed his irritated dismay at the widespread amount (and sophistication) of the cheating he observed going on.
He said the cheaters casually rationalized their behavior - "everybody does it", "that's what you have to do to survive".
Evidently that's how Generation XBox "competes".
Maybe "competitive" colleges should require at least 5 immutable character references, and a verifiable history thereof, instead...?
From what I've observed directly elsewhere, there was certainly no shortage of AP course work among the predators who helped manufacture the 700+ trillion dollars worth of derivative a$$paper presently circling the vortex of the global economic sewage pond.
M.B.A. =
M.ore
B.S.
A.bove
Hos 12:7-8
7 The merchant uses dishonest scales;
he loves to defraud.
8 Ephraim boasts,
"I am very rich; I have become wealthy.
With all my wealth they will not find in me
any iniquity or sin."
NIV
Same Ol' "competetive" Ba'alshyte, different municipal toilet.