@LvMyKids2 - two admissions officers is just as much of an anecdote. I’ve heard from a whole panel you should take the APs that interest you. (Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Vassar and a couple of more admissions officers.) That said, of course I think generally a kid aiming at top schools should consider taking one or both of the AP English courses. I’m just here to tell you it’s not necessarily a deal breaker if you don’t. It probably didn’t hurt in our case that one kid had a 790 and the other an 800 on the SAT verbal section. They loved to read. They just didn’t like the way English is taught in our school.
Interestingly, younger son got interested in creative writing thanks to the elective he took and he continued to take creative writing in college. He listens to a number of podcasts about the writing process. I think he’s got a better grasp of the way writers think than the English teacher who made him write about religious symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea.