it is straight scale 4.0. I suspect it was easier for my daughter to get As in her community college classes than the AP course at the High School, but some of her university classes were much harder than anything at the high school. She lost class ranking for an A- in Mechanics of Materials which is a sophomore/junior engineering level class in which only 15% of the class got an A.
The whole AP thing is pernicious because many of the more elite universities don't even accept the credit, but you cannot get into the university without taking the hardest offerings at your high school (you would be better to go to a high school which does not have an AP program). That means you are repeating the content in which you beat your head on in high school. You sometimes end of taking two AP tests in the same day which is incredibly stressful (imagine spending a year studying a class and getting nothing for it).
I was talking with my niece tonight at my daughter's graduation open house. She took AP Composition in high school which did absolutely nothing for her at her university or the university in which my daughter will be attending. My daughter took Comp I and Comp II at a community college so she won't have a composition class at a the university. AP Biology does not satisfy any science or engineering degree requirements. You have to get a 4 or 5 to even get one semester of Chemistry (my daughter took Chemistry I at our regional university instead). The AP Psychology takes a year to get one semester credit. The AP Calculus class takes a year to get one semester credit (you also have to take a Precalculus class first so it is a 1 1/2 year investment for one semester).
In Iowa the universities have strong articulation agreements with the community colleges. That way you know what classes count towards a degree before you take them. That is good and bad. No doubt my daughter has had a couple of classes which are not sufficiently rigorous enough to prepare her for getting As in upper engineering classes, but on the other hand I am working with her to prepare for those engineering classes. Her Engineering Physics II course had 23 students in it - 22 of them were sophomore-senior engineering majors at the university she will be attending, while she, as the 23rd, was a high school senior.
It is the mission of colleges to slow you down and force you to take as long as possible to get your degree. I pushed really hard to get my daughter scheduled in her first semester classes (two junior and two sophomore engineering classes). Without me pushing I feel it is likely that they would have told her that these courses were closed.
I know my daughter had a much more relaxing final semester than many of her peers. She really only had one class which pushed her (Engineering Statistics). Most of her semester was wrapped up when AP test taking time rolled around.
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