In our school AP Lang was tracked for 11th graders and AP Lit for 12th graders. Both my kids took honors English in 11th grade and English electives in 12th. (Not even honors - but they liked the idea of delving into a theme.) They both had sky high verbal SAT scores and loved to read, but hated English classes. The older one was a math guy - had the big three science APs,AP Calc (and beyond), AP Comp Sci, AP Econ, and APUSH. The younger one was interested in International Relations. He took 3 history APs, AP Calc BC, AP Bio, and AP Chem. Their school considered their schedules “most rigorous”. The older one got into Harvard, Carnegie Mellon (SCS), RPI and WPI. He was rejected by MIT and Caltech and was waitlisted by Harvey Mudd. Younger son got into U of Chicago, Vassar, Tufts and American and was rejected by Harvard, Brown and Georgetown. Older kid was in the top 2% of the class, younger one the top 6%. Big suburban high school of middling quality overall, but a decent sized cohort of high achieving kids.
Older son’s rejections could be due to not taking AP English, or just the vagaries of who is reading the applications. Younger son’s grades were not actually as good as his GPA implied, I never could figure out how the school arrived at the number they did, so we all were very happy with his results.
But the most important thing is that they both really enjoyed their senior years. My younger son in particular had great fun with some creative writing assignments that were given, and continued to take creative writing classes in college.