Hello everyone!
I touched on the topic of early AP test registration in my last post (which you should also go check out if you haven’t!), but I didn’t go super into depth or give my personal opinion on it. I’ll get things started by saying that frankly, I’m not the biggest fan.
Basically, AP test signups used to be in March, towards the end of the school year and only a couple months before the test; you would be almost done with the course, and have a pretty good idea of whether you wanted to actually take the test or not, based on how you thought you would do on it. Now, the deadline to sign up for your tests is November 15th, and late registration will have a fee of $40 (per test, I believe?). There’s also a $40 fee if you sign up but don’t end up taking the exam.
The registration process has had an overhaul in general. You now sign up through your AP class to an “AP classroom” online and register for the test there, and you also do the normal registration paperwork/payment, so it’s a two-step process. There are quite a few reasons why all these changes are inconvenient and somewhat ridiculous, which I will list here.
- It burdens low-income students – Low-income students will have to decide faster whether it’s worth it for them to take the exam, and will have less time to save up/get the money to pay for the tests. I feel like these earlier test dates are just another thing that will stress out these groups, and many people have pointed this out as being a problem.
- Students may end up dropping the class – If you end up dropping the class or struggling in it, you may not want to take the exam- especially if you don’t think you’re going to pass. Lots of people may end up dropping an AP class or not doing so well in it around the first semester mark, when they will already have had to sign up and pay for their test.
- Self-studying becomes more complicated – I personally experienced this, but it luckily wasn’t even too complicated because my school does offer the AP class that I needed to sign up for. This probably isn’t the case at lots of other schools where people are self-studying though; if your school doesn’t offer AP classes, specifically the ones you are self-studying, you’ll have to find a school that does, AND a specific teacher who you can sign up online through.
- Seniors haven’t finished college applications – Lots of seniors decide whether or not to take AP tests based on the colleges they are applying to/get accepted to/are attending and their individual policies on accepting APs for college credit. If you have to sign up by November, you might not have even sent out all your college applications. I guess you can still weigh it based on the colleges you’re interested in, but this just seems like an unnecessary stress put on seniors.
Overall, this decision just seems like a major cash-grab by the College Board. Since they really do have a monopoly on the whole standardized testing scene for the most part, it’s something they can do. They claim it’s not about profit and it’s actually about motivating students and giving everyone an equal chance for success on the tests, but I don’t see how this decision would correlate to that. Feel free to share your thoughts with me!
-Brooke
adventures of a typical high school student 