Does taking APUSH really helps in college admissions? Please advise.

Just an FYI: STEM kid at our high school last year was told by college advisor that not having any AP english or history classes didn’t look great. And this kid, with 15something on SATs, ECs up the wazoo, National Merit etc… did not do as well as expected in the college applications game. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but I think they do want to see challenging courses in the english/history sphere.