I just finished taking three AP tests in the past week, and I have one more coming up later this month. Given that I am a diligent student and put a tremendous amount of time and effort into my studies, I normally feel quite confident in my test results. However, with the College Board, I am put into a period of intense stress from the months of May to July praying that I mustered up enough points to pass my exam. 

College Board offers multiple AP courses on a wide variety of topics, aimed toward providing students with challenging coursework to gain college credit while in high school. For myself, I took the challenge my senior year of high school by enrolling in American Government and Politics, Environmental Science, Statistics, and Psychology all at the AP level under the College Board's swindling wing. 

The scoring for AP exams falls onto a 1-5 scale with 1 meaning no credit is given, and with 5 meaning that full credit is given. Some colleges and universities across America take 3’s (which falls right in the middle), but the majority accept only 4’s and 5’s. This requires a student like myself to score in the highest percentile of all the cumulative grades of students completing the exam across the nation, simulating a Hunger Games fight for the 4 or 5, while all the others are left in the dust with no credit. In fact, according to data released by College Board in 2016, only 12.5% of students earned 5s, while 18.6% earned 4s across all of the exams administered that year. For the remaining 68.95% of students, they are left with nothing but fees and feelings of failure as they put a whole year's worth of stress and work into the course, but came up with nothing in return. I have been one of these students, as I received a score I wasn't expecting from an exam last year, and especially with the fact that my parents pay close to $100 per course, I feel as if I let them down, which has caused me loads of stress during this school year to not disappoint them again. This stress has even caused a physical toll, with my recent development of eye twitches and intense headaches during exam week. 

Not only does College Board dig at your brain, but also at your pockets. Cruelly, the College Board requires students to pay fees that are usually around $100 per course . This means that for a student like myself taking four AP courses, my family offers up $400 in hopes that I am one of those students who falls into the 31.1% that gain college credit. Detailed by Elvira Garamy of Sutton High News, College Board strives itself on being a “not-for-profit membership organization committed to excellence and equity in education,” yet is sure quick to collect money from students like myself who are not only overwhelmed by the stress of the course and exam, but also the financial burden that comes along with it. 

No exam should be more intense than the actual college experience. Most college courses revolve around project-based learning and involve multiple study and support groups with the professors who teach them. Failures and mistakes are accepted, and there are ways to find success and grow from these outcomes. Alternatively, AP courses are a hit or miss. They do not make you feel worthy if you don't live up to expectations of passing the exam, as failure leaves you with nothing but a sense of defeat. 

The College Board seems to have no regard for the students they oversee and are only focused on the profits that come from them. If the College Board truly cares about their students and truly values providing excellence and equity in education like they pride themselves on, they need to change their credit requirements to 50% being determined by the in-class grade, and the other 50% coming from the test grade. By easing up the requirements for college credit, one exam does not define a student's entire year of work. 

Works Cited

“AP Exams: Who earns 4s and 5s?” Occam Education, 12 December 2020, occameducation.com/ap-exams-earning-4s-and-5s. Accessed 6 May 2022.

Garamy, Elvira. “The College Board is a Scam – Sutton High News.” Sutton High News, 28 September 2021, suttonhighnews.net/842/showcase/the-college-board-is-a-scam/. Accessed 6 May 2022.