College Board security is important

It’s almost an official part of the exam. After the marathon, often 3-hour plus exams, students discuss the exam. In the halls outside on a testing room, you’ll certainly hear the discussion of difficult essay questions or confusingly worded multiple-choice questions.

There’s another part, though, that is an official part of the exam. Your proctor will probably tell you about the risks of sharing testing information by talking about test questions or essay topics and approaches. They probably warned you about the risks– which include getting your scores canceled.

The College Board, who are probably not your most favorite people in the world, expand on this possibility:

“Something you may not have intended as a violation, like casually talking about a multiple-choice question with your friends or your teacher during the exam break, or discussing a free-response online right after the exam, can actually result in having your score canceled.”

AP Exams are held and created under huge amounts of secrecy. One AP teacher at OCSA mentioned that, “like only four people know the essay prompts before the test is released.” You probably remember unwrapping the shrink wrapped tests and then re-sealing them at the end.

Why so strict? AP Tests are a big part of college decisions and can even count as class credit, so security is extremely important. College Board Administrators also don’t want students who take the test late in make-up testing to have an unfair advantage. Some amount of test questions are reused every year, too, which also shows the importance of the secrecy policies.