Passingthrough,
When did you attend Patrick Henry? I attended in the early 1990s, and at that point, it did not have a seminar program. Several of the feeder schools did (Lewis JHS and several local elementaries).
I started in seminar at Hearst Elementary and also Lewis Junior High. When we finished 9th grade, our class dispersed. A few went to private schools and a few went to other seminar programs (Point Loma HS, La Jolla HS) but most of the Lewis seminar class stayed on and attended PHHS. We had some fantastic AP classes there mixing mostly the old seminar crowd and some of the kids who used to be in “cluster” at either Lewis or Pershing. And yes, many of the “cluster” kids were nearly as high achieving as the seminar kids. I thought the AP prep was great. I personally took 8 AP tests and got seven 5’s and one 4 (Spanish IIRC).
I am still in touch with almost all of the Lewis seminar group and about 30-40 of my PHHS classmates on Facebook! Most are very successful. My former class has 7 MDs, as well as multiple PhDs, lawyers, journalists, etc etc.
I am sorry to hear that your experience at PHHS was not as good as mine!