College Board Announces Details for Online Exams

by Jimmy Yates ‘21

Due to the Coronavirus and closures of schools in all states across the nation for an extended period of time, the College Board announced AP Exams will be administered from May 11 to May 22 at home as a 45-minute free response exam, plus five minutes for uploading the exam. Make-up tests will be from June 1 to 5. Exams will be scored on the same 1-5 scale and scores are planned to be released at the normal time, late July.

Each individual exam will be given at the same time across the nation. Exams will take place at 12 p.m., 2 p.m., and/or 4 p.m. eastern time depending on the subject. Students may type their responses or write them on a piece of paper and upload a picture via cellphone. The exam format was changed partly because only material taught from the beginning of the school year until early March will be covered on AP exams.

Many predicted the College Board would cancel or postpone the exam, keeping the same format intact, to make sure students have mastered all the material the course requires. However, the College Board stated on March 20 that 91 percent of students surveyed stated that they still wanted to take the AP Exam for their course. The College Board stated that they are “confident the vast majority of higher ed institutions will award college credit as they have in the past” because “hundreds of institutions across the country support our solution for this year’s AP Exams.

Because it would be difficult if not impossible to stop students from using outside resources during the AP exam, exams this year will be open note, though the short 45 minute window will make it difficult to search through notes successfully. The College board will use a variety of digital tools to prevent plagiarism and will send each AP teacher a copy of their students’ work to “spot any inconsistencies with the [students’ known] work.”