Students face AP exam complications

Abby Shapiro, Staff Writer|May 20, 2020

Due to the pandemic, students are taking virtual Advanced Placement exams May 11 to May 22. While the College Board released a practice demo for submitting responses, students faced complications and may have to retake their exams.

Junior Aishwarya Pathri was one of the many Advanced Placement students who were unable to submit their test answers on this year’s virtual exams. Pathri said she read that 10% of students could not submit their responses this year.

Pathri was “frantically clicking the [submit] button” as she watched the time go down, saying that it was “frustrating” experience for her.

Due to the coronavirus and schools being shut down, students around the world are taking virtual AP exams between May 11 and May 22 from home.

For most exams without portfolio components, students could attach a photo, copy and paste, or upload a document in the last five minutes to submit their answers, according to the College Board website.

The College Board released a demo to practice submitting prior to the exams. However, both Pathri and junior Madison Miller found it difficult to submit their AP Physics exam responses.

Given the wide variety of devices, browsers, and versions students are using, we anticipated that a small percentage of students would encounter technical difficulties, and we have a makeup window in June so students have another opportunity to test.

— The College Board (@CollegeBoard) May 11, 2020

“I think the College Board is making everyone stressed out this year, especially considering everything trending on Twitter is about people not being able to submit their exams,” senior Estefania Chinchilla said, who is taking the French, Spanish, English literature, government, and world history exams. “It really gets to me.”

During the first week of exams, students who were unable to submit will have to take a makeup test between June 1 to June 5.

“For the second question on my physics exam, the submit button was broken so now I have to retake the exam,” Miller said.

College Board announced that starting May 18 and continuing through the makeup window, there will be a backup email submission process for browser-based exams. It is unable to accept submissions for students who tested from May 11 to May 15 “to protect the security and validity of exams.”

For her exams, Chinchilla was able to successfully submit her work to be graded.

“Thankfully, I didn’t have any issues [submitting my exams], and hopefully there aren’t any issues in my upcoming test ethier,” Chinchilla said. “I think the good part of this year’s exams was that this year being on a laptop I could get more words out for my paper.”