Due to the COVID-19 outbreaks throughout the world, the College Board has reformatted the 2020 Advanced Placement exams. These changes will affect students around the world. The College Board first announced these changes on March 20, 2020, and has consistently been updating staff and students since.
For most of the 2020 Advanced Placement exams, students will be given an online 45-minute at home, consisting of one or two free response questions. If students are back in school, these tests may be administered in the normal testing location. They are “open-note” exams, which means that students will have access to their notes when writing these responses.
Students will be given 45 minutes to complete their free response answers, with an additional 5 minutes to upload their answers and submit. They have the option of typing their answer or hand-writing it and uploading a picture. Regardless of which option they choose, students must submit their answer using the same device on which they accessed the question.
On April 3, 2020, the College Board announced which free response questions would be tested, presumably after determining which questions were most indicative of a student’s understanding. In addition, the exams are limited to content that “most AP teachers and students have covered in class by early March,” so students will not have to self-study missed content. However, many colleges have expressed the desire for their students to learn missed content, so as not to fall behind.
Some classes, like AP Computer Science Principles, will only give scores based on portfolios that students have been compiling throughout the year without a final exam. Others, like the world culture and language exams, only consist of oral exams.
The College Board is also offering complete refunds to students who wish to cancel their exams, given the circumstances. This is a change from their normal $45 cancellation fee.
“I’m just glad they’re giving me a full refund for exams that I cancel. I signed up for some exams earlier this year but the college I committed to isn’t going to give me credit for them,” RMHS senior Vickie Tan said.
There will be two testing dates for each exam, one in May and one in early June. Although the later dates provide students with more time to prepare, they are meant to be makeup dates for students that experienced technical issues on the May testing date. Students that choose to take the later exams will only have one chance to submit their exams, and will not receive another chance if they encounter technical issues.
Students that do not have access to Internet or necessary electronic tools may reach out to the College Board to ensure that they can still take the exams if they wish. However, this still brings up the question of equity in the testing system.
“By going forward with the APs without ensuring that every kid who wants to take them has a device, internet connection, and technical support, College Board is perpetuating racism and inequity,” RMHS sophomore Eleanor Clemans-Cope said.
There have been varying responses to these changes. Some think that the College Board handled this quite well, all things considered.
“I think that the new testing system is good considering the unprecedented situation we are dealing with now and although it isn’t perfect, the changes are necessary and many criticisms fail to take into account the circumstances which made this change in test format necessary,” MBHS sophomore Jonathan Wen said.
Others believe that these exams do not properly test students, and doubt that colleges will give credit for these exams, despite the College Board’s announcement that the “vast majority of higher education institutions will award credit as they have in the past.”
“It’s not really fair that we have to pay for them but they’re not gonna count for credit because they’re super short. I’m pretty sure colleges are not accepting this year’s scores. At least, that’s what I heard from some seniors. I get that CollegeBoard is trying to do whatever they can in these desperate times, but this doesn’t seem fair,” WHS junior Shakti Arumugam said.
The College Board has also been clear about their measures to ensure testing security. They announced that, despite the open-note format, students are prohibited from interacting with others while taking the exams. The test questions themselves are designed so students cannot simply Google the answers or look in their textbooks. In addition, they have implemented various digital tools to check for plagiarism. Moreover, teachers will receive copies of their students’ answers so they can identify differences with their previous works.
The College Board has communicated serious consequences for breaches of security. This includes cancellation of scores, possible prohibition of taking future AP and SAT exams, and communication with the student’s high school. Furthermore, the College Board has said they will notify colleges that the student already sent AP or SAT scores to, as well as colleges they may send scores to in the future. In the most serious cases, law enforcement may be contacted.
There has been a lot of worry regarding this year’s AP tests. The limited content puts a lot of pressure on students. “It limits the content used, so if a kid is very good at all units except one and that one happens to be on the test, that kid is in bad shape,” RMHS sophomore William Mason said.
Students are also concerned that they are not properly prepared.
“I’m not really bothered by the changes, but it’s a little daunting just to know that it changed at all, because it’s different from what we were prepping for,” RMHS freshman Michelle Wong said.
There are still a lot of unknowns with the 2020 AP tests, like whether colleges will give credit and whether students are properly prepared. However, amidst all the unknowns in the world right now, AP exams will continue this year.
Article by Victoria Koretsky of Richard Montgomery High School
Graphic by Helena Yang of Richard Montgomery High School