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At my high school, the girl who took an absolutely obscene courseload and is now at Princeton actually watered down her GPA by taking many, many academic electives that were unweighted (4 languages, none of which were weighted until the 3-4 levels). Some students refused to expand their horizons like this because they didn't want to "water down" their weighted GPAs. Similarly, some students refrained from taking college courses offered on campus because they weren't factored into GPA.
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<p>There's a conflation of several things here. One is the use of APs as signifying taking the most difficult courses a high school has to offer. Another is achieving and maintaining a high GPA, often through APs, and finally taking college courses that are arguably more difficult than APs but do not contribute to a high GPA.</p>
<p>S, without any hook whatsoever at Stanford, was admitted there and courted by the adcom. He'd taken a large number of college courses as well as some APs. His GPA was way below that of the vals and sals at his high school. But Stanford recognized that the college courses he took were well above APs in terms of difficulty. So the fact that several ended up on his transcript as Pass/Fail and that in some others he achieved an A- or a B+ was not to his disadvantage. What Stanford saw was an applicant who was absolutely passionate about his area of interest. It also happened to be one that Stanford has been keen on strengthening, as we learned later.</p>