These past two years of school have been egregious beyond parody. From an increased workload to Zoom detention to expecting kindergartners to sit for five hours straight, school has been significantly more awful than usual since March 2020.
While students’ general routines came crashing down in March 2020, there have been attempts from school staff to make it slightly more bearable. Some teachers have offered various resources, extra one-on-one time or adopted a more generous grading policy. While these are great improvements for students who may have already been struggling with in-person school, none of these changes could ever outweigh the unforgiving nature of technical difficulties. The stress of waiting to be connected to a Zoom meeting that is already in progress is matched by realizing you forgot to turn your mic off.
One of the many features of a high school education that needed to be adapted to an online-exclusive format during the pandemic was AP exams. The College Board is in charge of administering AP exams. As many students have mentioned through social media or other means, last year’s tests were very poorly handled.
All AP exams of all subjects were planned on the same day at the same time in order to prevent cheating. However, this led to many students taking their exams at ridiculous times, either late at night or at the crack of dawn. Students who did not have internet at home were told to take their exam in a McDonald’s parking lot. And most notoriously, there were countless videos posted to both YouTube and TikTok of students filming their exam screen attempting to submit as their allotted submission time of five minutes slowly counted down. The submission failure meant that students would need to retake the exam at a later date, an undeserved punishment especially for those taking advanced courses online during a pandemic.
There were a few possible explanations for the submission failure. There is at least one written portion of every AP exam, and some students chose to handwrite their answers rather than type them. This meant that students needed to submit a picture of their handwriting, which requires processing at the mercy of the internet. The image format from both Iphones and Androids was unable to be converted and submitted, along with the entire exam. The College Board put out a response on Twitter, a social media platform not everyone has (rather than just emailing their test-takers) with instructions on how to convert the photo format in phone settings. However, this process proved convoluted and much too late for many students. Ella Sullivan, one of The Omniscient’s editors-in-chief, had an experience of her own last year.
“Last year, I took two exams with the College Board,” Sullivan said. “I found the online formatting very difficult to use and had a hard time getting information from the College Board before and after my tests…I think the College Board could do quite a few things to improve their services, especially since they cost so much. It is outrageous that they have monopolized the testing industry and monetized something that is required for students looking to go to college.”
Senior Alexandra Calisto had a slightly better experience to share:
“I took the test online, and the interface was good: clear, intuitive, etc,” Calisto said. “There were no problems when taking pictures of my work. However, there were issues when I was uploading the pictures for my first exam. They did not upload in time, and I was forced to take the make-up exam in June, maybe two weeks from the original exam date. (That being said, this problem did not occur for the other two exams that I took.) The make-up exam went smoothly, and even though I thought my first attempt was better, I was still confident. I ended up getting a 5 [the highest score possible], and that exam ended up being my best performance on the tests last year.”
Senior Jillian McNaught had perhaps the most fortunate experience of all.
“I found that the test interface used last year was fairly easy to navigate and understand,” McNaught said. “There were actually quite a few opportunities to practice using the test interface before taking the exam. Though it was very different from previous administrations, it seemed that the College Board tried to help us to adjust to the new format as much as possible. I didn’t end up having any problems taking pictures of my work. My test ended up submitting correctly the first time, thank goodness. I didn’t end up having to retake the test, but I knew some people who did. There were a lot of people who were really frustrated about that. They had already taken the exam, but a problem with the testing interface required them to take it again, which didn’t seem very fair.”
AP exams have already begun for this school year and will continue into early June. The College Board, despite the glitches of last year, seems to have been receptive to the criticisms of test-takers (though the Board responded to these criticisms only after the glitches occurred), so hope for a better test-taking process this year is high. Then again, just yesterday, I saw a video of a girl on TikTok walking out of her school crying because only 67 physical AP exams were delivered for 88 students, so who knows?
May the best laggy Chromebook win.
Graphic from Unsplash.
