College Board Rant

I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, you know what AP exams are and have probably taken one. In that case, you’re probably familiar with College Board, a not-for-profit whose goal is to make higher education more accessible.

Well, that seems innocuous enough. So why is College Board sometimes vilified by both students and educators? For one, they call themselves the College Board. Not just a board, the board. This indicates that they want to be seen as an authority, which ignores the fact that College Board is neither a public entity, nor is it directly associated with the government or any college for that matter. Thus, they aren’t as ethically bound as we might expect them to be.

Any critique of College Board has to mention the fact that it’s a not-for-profit organization. A not-for-profit organization does not own profit for its owners. College Board is technically a not-for-profit if we examine it from a legal perspective. However, despite being a not-for-profit organization, College Board consistently uses tactics associated with for-profit organizations, with them ranging from questionable to down-right unethical. Oh, and this is all while they are tax exempt and paying their CEO over $2.5M a year.

Just as an example: if you’re like me and take AP English Lang, there’s a good chance you’re taking AP Lit next year. However, most colleges don’t accept both AP Lang and AP Lit credit. That shouldn’t be an issue, right? You can just choose not to sign up at the very start of the year until you get an EA or RD acceptance. Sure, but then College Board decides to slap on a $40 fine. Do they want a sample of my tears along with it? As another example of College Board’s obsession with fees, they charge you $14 to send your SAT score, per institution. Yes, per institution! Are we funding College Board and Trevor Packer’s bougie, Erewhon-made Dubai Chocolate infused latte addiction?

Alright, so College Board already loves screwing us over with extra fees. And that’s not even mentioning the substantial charge for just purchasing exams. Surely they can treat their customers properly and make good exams! Right?

Well, I sure believe that, because it feels great when College Board sells our personal data! Yes, in 2024, College Board was fined $750,000 for selling student names and other information to various education institutions, all to send incessant amounts of spam mail to our inboxes. College Board is quite literally the equivalent of that jobless friend who sends you incessant Instagram reels. Except they’re making bank off of it!

Also, AP exams are overly scuffed for the $99 dollar fee charged. This year, most students couldn’t take the AP Psychology exam because of a large-scale technical issue. As another example of College Board’s incompetence, the late-testing version of AP Chemistry had an unsolvable FRQ because of a particularly egregious typo. Oh, and the infamous APLAC passage. LOOK AT ME. Yeah, they didn’t ask for any permission from either the author or publisher to use it. This probably isn’t illegal, but it’s certainly unethical, especially given the author’s staunch opposition to standardized tests and the end result of her book being review bombed by angry students.

Regardless of the many, many wrongdoings of College Board that exist, most students will continue feeding them. I myself am somewhat guilty of this—I’ll probably be buying like 4 AP exams next year! AP exams do have their place, as they are significantly cheaper than taking a college course. Regardless, College Board’s ethics are strangely missing for an organization that attempts to display itself as being mission driven. It’s up to us on whether or not we choose to support their dubious practices.