For our S, he opted not to take APUSH or AP Lang but instead our HS offered the last few years an honors bundle of English Humanities/History Humanities where they paired the two and the kids could read literature and study art, music, etc from the period of time they studied. My son took it b/c he thought it was more interesting than taking APUSH taught to a standardized test requirements.
Perhaps the saddest thing going into scheduling my S’s senior year is we started high school looking at this great big course catalog and encouring him to explore all areas of interest and focusing on what he liked rather than what colleges liked. Then we fell into the AP trap and so, for example, he dropped a Biotech elective this year he really wanted to explore to add a 4th AP (stats). You can imagine the frustration when the kids do that, get to senior year and hear “you should really focus on lower schools because all those schools you’ve been targeting don’t accept many like you…” I guess that explains why they are all in therapy, but I digress…