I'm in my last year of college. I remember taking these classes. I can assure you that all high school classes are equally efficient at crushing creativity and destroying all intellectual curiosity. AP classes were still helpful when working the college credit system, however, because they provided you with almost 2 quarter's worth of additional credits. Of the 2 courses I was forced to take twice for various absurd reasons that are mostly caused by my university's appalling computer science major, the AP courses had covered almost all the material that was gone over in college.

The only difference was that college was even more automated and pointless. Everything was horrendously standardized, even the homework, which was graded by computer half the time, removing all possibility of partial credit.

No, if AP classes are a scam, it is only because the entire american educational system is a scam.