By Jacob Golomb ’16

College Board is a nonprofit organization that provides standardized testing and college-level courses to high school students. The organization was founded in 1899 to analyze and publish guidelines for subjects high school students should be taught before entering college. The College Board has since expanded to run the SAT and AP classes.

The organization now spends hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying federal and state governments to continue incorporating SAT and AP exams as part of secondary education. Last year, the CEO of College Board, Gaston Capperton, made $1.3 million in salary, and the organization’s executives each made over $300,000.

The AP

AP classes are courses designed by the College Board in a variety of subjects, ranging from Physics to Japanese. The courses are constructed to be college-level and students have the option of taking an exam in May. If a student scores high enough, that student can get credit for introductory courses at colleges. Students must pay $86 per test, and many top colleges expect that students will have taken them. Each year, over a million students around the world take AP exams. The College Board makes more money from AP than SAT, PSAT, and SAT Subject Tests combined.

Some people argue that AP classes do less to prepare students for college-level courses and instead prepare students just to score high on the AP exam. Predictably, as AP enrollment increases, fewer students are taking introductory college courses because they place out of them. Dartmouth, for example, made the decision to not give students credit for AP courses.

The SAT

The SAT is a standardized test for high school students planning on applying for college. The College Board has administered the SAT every year since 1926. Currently, the students must pay $51 per test. The SAT is very popular choice of standardized test to take for college admission, and all colleges accept SAT scores for test requirement. 1.7 million high school students of the class of 2015 took the test. To help improve scores for the SAT, the College Board offers The Official College Board SAT Study Guide for $22 and The Official Online SAT Course for $34. Some colleges also require applicants to submit SAT Subject Tests, which College Board offers for $43 per test.

The Common Core

The current College Board president David Coleman previously played a leading role in developing the Common Core Standards, a controversial standardized K-12 educational initiative. The new SAT, compared by some to how the ACT works, is intended by Coleman to align with Common Core Standards. As Common Core has expanded to 42 states, the new SAT is structured to be relevant to the skills most students are learning in school. College Board also has the SpringBoard Program to integrate Common Core teaching strategies in students’ education.