AP credit can satisfy the course requirement, or sometimes just give literally advanced placement (you can take English II rather than English I, but have to take 3 credits of English). There is no grade point assigned, so if you have say 15 AP credits, your denominator goes down by 15 credits, and you have no grade for the class.
There are some who say, oh repeat say Physics - Mechanics, get an easy A … but some schools will have no easy As. So if you are say a future ME, you may want to repeat only if you feel your background is weak (but if you get a 5, you probably have mastered the material, there is no grade inflation on AP grades).
For my example, I had 10 classes, where you could get at most 1C or 2Bs and keep a 3.8. If you place out of 2 and don’t take anything else … you could potentially get all As … or you could take Easy Basketweaving 101 …
3.8 is rare at most schools … even that state school your kid doesn’t want to go to because they would rather attend prestigious school X.
At that point, it is almost a lottery … with sort of a very bad prize, leave your beloved school after 1 year … or change to something like physics with much worse job prospects (and probably no easier at all).
OK - looking at this really at a top level, if TAMU is only accepting like 34% of applicants … that is really probably a full 33% less than would normally keep plugging away at an engineering degree (some of those will not graduate as engineers … but that is OK), and about 15% less than would normally graduate in engineering (about 50% drop out, more women than men, but this is a different topic).
It is a service of sorts to gently prod people out of engineering who are not willing or able to do the work … it just does not get easier and few people are going to “get calculus” or "get physics’ in an ah-ha moment in junior year of a dreadfully hard engineering major.
it is a disservice to those who are getting mostly As with a few Bs who genuinely are interested and are likely working really hard to get those As and Bs … to not allow them to matriculate into the engineering major they want …
UC-San Diego had a similar system, which is one of many reasons my OOS D did not attend.
in their defense, all schools publish their criteria to enter the engineering fields, which are really almost all limited enrollment in one way or another …
but personally I think 3.8 is too high … and that schools that allow flow into the system and flow out … with adequate space for interested and qualified students … are the best.
States need engineers, so state schools should open more slots … pay faculty better, near industry standards, etc … give our PhD engineers something to do and train more good engineers at top state schools.
We could argue more about the logic of lower tier schools … but ABET accrediting and difficult classes pretty much eliminates the dumb engineers who build bridges that fall down (not the ones that fall down after not being maintained for 50 years).