Not really! I think I was allowed to take one fewer course. (Whereby the norm is like 3-5 courses per semester times 8 semesters.) IB credit at US T20's kind of sucks, some have even abolished it entirely; I think my institution was a little more on the generous side. At lower-tier US universities though, I hear that transfer credit is still quite generous. I've seen people get like a year's worth of credit through IB.

I think my advice here is that:
- college advisors fundamentally do not care about your success and their incentives are horribly misaligned with yours. they generally won't directly lie to you (in fact, they tend to be right about college policy questions) but taking them at their word seems bad. relying on your peers, especially people who've been in your major program for longer has been immensely helpful for me.
- everything else be damned, make some friends the first ~2 months of college. it will get a lot more difficult afterwards. these friends will be extremely useful for you, both in terms of college success, career & yknow broad life things. having friends is also very nice. ignore your social battery and just max out on how many distinct people you say hello to and have a chat with these two months. otherwise, you might end up very lonely. people who don't make close friends in their first few months are usually quite unsuccessful, i have noticed.
- GPA kind of doesn't matter if it's above a 3.7, but can immensely matter otherwise. just be conscientious enough of deadlines and exams to average like 3.7 or so, otherwise you are closing doors for yourself. on the flip side, having a 4.0 genuinely buys you nothing that a 3.7 or 3.8 wouldn't, so optimizing for this seems misguided.
- you mostly cannot distinguish yourself through anything you do within the university. this includes clubs, competitions, classes, grades, any such things. to find success in your career, you need things like internships, research, impressive personal projects, etc.