“… it would be a good idea for a student who wants to continue to more advanced courses to try the college’s old final exams for the course that may be skipped to see if s/he knows the material well by the college’s standards.”
Where an HYPS institution has said an AP score of ‘4’ or ‘5’ will exempt a student from two levels of study in a course of study, and my child has scored a ‘5’, I would not even consider having her take the college’s old exams, or be concerned about her fit for the level of study which finds she would now be “advanced”. I have to believe the institution has thought this process out, and has deemed it feasible.
I do hear the sound reasoning of your statement, but moving along in coursework, which then does free you to more readily explore courses within a major, or tangential to one’s major course of study, is excited and feeds the interest of the student who worked so hard to get there. They can once again be excited about study, as they feel the reward of the previous years’ work expanding the palate of options for them.