Every year, just as students are starting to check out for summer and are so close that they can taste it, everyone who has spent the better part of their year studying for their AP classes, now get to be shoved into a cold and quiet room with hundreds of their classmates to see if their hard work will pay of. They get to take their AP tests.
This year marks the 70th year of AP testing and our beloved college board, and with this milestone, all AP tests from this year on will be online. This will impact all 26 tests, but some more than others. Simple multiple choice questions will not be impacted much, but for English tests with lots of typing, or math or science tests with long equations things might be tricky.
“I know it’s [online testing] supposed to stop cheating, and I don’t want cheating you know, but I’m really scared about getting more mixed up with the questions,” senior Eleanor Ronan said. “I really do struggle more when I can’t make little notes off to the side or highlight, it ruins things. It seems trivial, but I think it really does help me, so I am a little scared.”
Upperclassmen or sophomores who have taken AP tests before understand all the scary risks, and also great rewards that AP tests can bring. When things go wrong, or you don’t do well, it can feel as if you’ve wasted a whole year on something. On the other hand, if you pass, it can save thousands of dollars and tens of hours on college classes. However, these new online changes aren’t just affecting the experienced test takers. Freshman who have never taken AP tests before are going in blind.
“I think that it will be similar to how I’ve taken the STAAR, just slightly harder to focus on,” freshman Sidney Wigley said. “I tend to zone out during computer tests, but our in class tests have been online all year, so I feel prepared. I think I’ll be just fine since we have been doing online testing and FRQs all year.”
The attention span of students is at an all-time low. Thanks to social media and doom-scrolling, we have a hard time doing anything on a computer screen that we can’t click off of after 30 seconds. Having to be on a laptop for hours on end taking the same test, or in some cases, tests back to back, will fry students’ minds quite fast.
“I am not a fan of the tests being online because I am better at processing things on paper,” junior Kamryn Detlefsen said. “I think the tests being online will make it much more difficult because I hate staring at a screen all day and especially the math aspects are hard to do on paper and a computer together.”
Changing anything from paper to technology has its risks, but changing something on such large a scale this fast will be interesting to see. With hundreds of students in one room, Wi-Fi is bound to go out, computers are bound to die, and other random issues are bound to pop up.
“I’m especially worried about my back to back tests that first Monday,” Ronan said. “I’m worried that I’m not going to have access to an outlet, and that I won’t be able to charge my computer, and that it’s going to die. Then I would have to switch to a school laptop and that I’m familiar with, and so that’s kind of scary.”
Here is the 2025 AP test schedule! Arrive at least 30 minutes before your test with a charged laptop, and good luck on your tests Rangers!
