marite

Of course reporting scores is optional. And adcoms are free to interpret what is reported and not reported, and the labeling of courses as they wish. If you want to have the greatest possible chance of admission at some of the hardest to get into colleges, you make the strongest possible case. Nobody forces anybody to report scores, but then nobody forces anybody to apply to specific colleges that are known to have very tough criteria for admission.
Simple as that. I don't see that there is much to argue about.

EDIT: Thanks to Asteriskea for starting a new thread on the CB's audit of AP scores. It put the relationship between scores and AP courses into perspective.
For the record, I am no fan of either the AP courses or AP exams. It just so happens that at many schools, these are the most challenging courses available to students who do not want to snooze their way through 3-4 years of high school. Like most tests, AP exams favor certain types of students and certain types of preparation. And given the incredible variation among courses that are labeled APs (by the schools, not the CB), the exams, flawed as they are, are a validating tool (just as the SAT is, another flawed test in my opinion).