I had a rather unique AP Computer Science high school experience a number of years ago.

The AP class was mainly a self or group study class inside of a lower level programming class.

We didn't get as much directed study, but we basically were allowed to chose projects that interested us and spent a lot of time developing them and getting help, iterating, figuring it out.

We ended up doing only OK on the AP exam, but we had built a pretty impressive little java app by the end. A scrolling tile based map, enough network code to run a chat and let users join, and we had started building some game logic on top of our multiplayer game room. Very cool and informative, but not exactly what the AP exam was looking for.