Imagine finishing an Advanced Placement (AP) exam only to be met by error message after error message. Or, before the exam even begins, you are unable to log in to even start the test.
This was the experience many Chapel Hill High School students had while taking the AP English Language and Composition exam and AP Chinese Language and Culture exams. The exams had issues with submissions and the platform crashing mid-test, respectively.
“AP Chinese has been digital for many years; The College Board used to do it via CD-ROMs that would be sent to schools, so it wasn’t necessarily new that the test was online,” Chapel Hill High School’s AP Coordinator Karyn Dickerson said. “It just so happened that this year there was some error with College Board’s servers.”
Given the digital nature of the exams, the problems were with the testing applications themselves, with AP Language being administered on a new testing platform developed by the College Board.
During the AP Language exam, which took place on May 9, there were not any issues, but, immediately following the test, some students were unable to submit their answers, instead seeing a variety of errors such as, “It’s too late to start this test.”
Repeated error messages, and the overall novelty of digital AP exams, were alarming to several students.
“When my exam did not submit and I had to stay (in the exam room), I was worried that I might have to retake the test,” sophomore Isis Chien, who took AP Language, said.
Other students were concerned about future implications of these technical errors.
“Earning college credit could have been jeopardized just because of a few glitches,” junior Matthew Hawley, also an AP Language student, said. “That was one of the more unsettling parts of the experience.”
The issue was resolved later that day. Students were notified that their responses had been submitted but were “incorrectly marked” in Bluebook, the digital testing application that was used for AP Language this year.
An email from the College Board later that day read, “When you completed your exam, your exam responses were successfully submitted… We deeply apologize for your exam experience.”
Despite the difficulties, students expressed relief about their exam scores.
“It was unfortunate that the glitches happened, but it’s more important that they did actually get our scores,” Hawley said.
The AP Chinese exam, originally administered on May 2, needed to be rescheduled altogether due to glitches in most students’ testing programs. Students took a makeup exam on May 18.
“I got through a good part of the multiple-choice section before being kicked out of the software,” sophomore Raina Zhou said.
Students’ progress was not saved from the first testing session, so they had to retake the test completely on the makeup date.
“It was disappointing to have to start over,” senior Allen Tian, who took AP Chinese, said.
The crash of the AP Chinese servers only affected part of the nation, with the College Board reporting that 4,700 students were affected.
“We actually had four students who were able to complete the [AP Chinese] exam, since they were connected to another server altogether,” Dickerson said.
The College Board did send emails to students and coordinators confirming the technical issues, but their acknowledgement was seen as lacking by Dickerson.
“There was really nothing we could do to fix the issue,” Dickerson said. “I expected [College Board] to be more apologetic since it was objectively their fault. Despite this, I’m glad the retake opportunity worked out.”
Most students gladly accepted the notion of a retake.
“They offered a retake, which I saw as a reasonable solution,” Tian said. “It’s great that they gave us that option.”
