"Asserting that AP classes are not equivalent to classes where he went to school is unhelpful. Mr. Tierney fails to mention that he went to Yale, making this anecdote disingenuous at best."

I did my first two at a community college. While I don't doubt that you can find some high school courses equivalent to or superior to their college analogues, this is not the prevailing reality.

But such positive outliers have little to nothing to do with the AP brand, and much more to do with the course's teacher. They certainly have nothing to do with AP testing for equivalency credit, which occurs after the fact. AP testing is a shoddy placement tool which frequently and provably tends to overstate students' preparedness for advanced studies.

In STEM fields, anyway. Freshmen distribution survey courses don't do much to prepare you for anything particular, even at Yale.