Each year, approximately 2 million high schoolers sit down to take the SAT, for $68 per test (and $111 if you live outside the U.S.). About a million more take AP exams for over $100 a pop. Middle schoolers can enjoy a slightly more infantile version of this through the PSAT 8/9, which goes for a varying cost to an already dizzying mix of other fees ($15 for a SAT score report! $34 for a SAT cancellation! School registration fees, proctoring fees, annual dues! And, if god forbid, you sign up late for one of these tests, well there’s a cost for that too!), and you get the College Board in all its glory. For an alleged non-profit that made $1.02 billion in 2023, the College Board fails to make good on its promise to connect students with success, and has instead monopolized the testing market, leaving both students and teachers deeply unhappy.
Over the years, the College Board has expanded its reach over the American high school system. What started off as an offering of standardized tests at the dawn of the 20th century has quickly evolved into something new. The College Board has dramatically expanded its range of services, now offering AP Exams and the PSAT in addition to the regular SAT. This gave it the power to become a monopoly, since no other organization offered any competing products at all. The lack of competition means that the organization has no incentive to improve its huge shortcomings, or keep prices affordable for students.
Although the ACT exists (an alternative to the SAT), its reach is much smaller, and its parent organizationNexus Capital Management, does not offer anything similar to the AP exams. Because so many colleges have deemed it necessary for students to take the SAT as well as a slew of APs, high school students have grown to rely more and more on the College Board.
For starters, College Board exams routinely run into technical problems. Just this year, hundreds of thousands of students were unable to take the digital AP Psychology exam at its scheduled time because of errors with the College Board’s testing software. During the March SATs, a security error on Bluebook, which powers the SATs, caused the tests of around 10,000 students to be submitted early. Not to mention that many SATs and PSATs often recycle questions, leaving students with question re-runs. If you’re paying $68 for a test, it should not be a repeat or have any brazen technical flaws.
Unfortunately, the College Board exams do, and the cost of these exams means that they are inaccessible to many and add even more stress onto students and their families. If a high schooler takes 6 APs, and takes the SAT three times in order to maximize their score, that will cost them an eye-popping $798, not to mention the added costs of changing test sites or canceling a test because of an emergency. Life happens, and instead of supporting students through it, the College Board tries to suck as much money as it can out of these situations. Many students feel forced to retake the SAT multiple times, as well as take several AP classes, because colleges want to see students challenge themselves academically and succeed in a standardized environment. That shouldn’t come at a huge financial cost too.
In addition to lightening wallets, the whole setup of standardized tests are exclusionary and not an indicator of true intelligence and worth. The new digital SAT consists of two English modules and two math modules, but the questions themselves fail to measure the examinee’s grasp of the subjects. Instead of including long excerpts from novels or an article from a genetics journal, the new test instead offers up short, soulless passages about the most niche topics, with questions about grammar rules certain passages themselves don’t even follow.
Similarly, success in the math section does not really require a deep knowledge of mathematical principles, but rather the aptitude to use the included graphing software. Colleges rely on tests like the SAT because they offer some level of consistency across state lines, unlike GPAs, which are really dependent on how hard teachers grade at individual schools. Still, the SAT design means that even if you are an artistic genius or a science prodigy, your creativity and intelligence may not reflect on your score on an impersonal, and frankly characterless test.
Furthermore, the College Board has shown that it will bend to political pressure when there is no need for it to do so. In 2023, after the launch of its new AP African American Studies curriculum, Florida governor Ron DeSantis lashed out at certain parts of the syllabus, including sections on movements like Black Lives Matter. In response, the College Board effectively submitted to DeSantis’ demands, and self-censored itself, editing out several controversial parts from the curriculum. This was a shameful act, because when governments exercise control over what students can and can’t access in a restrictive way, it silences free expression and actual learning. However, when Florida again attempted to force the College Board to change its AP Psychology curriculum—this time for content that focused on gender and sexual orientation—the organization refused to back down in the midst of political pressure. Clearly, the College Board makes the right choice selectively.
The organization as a whole must go beyond the bare minimum, and make sure that it doesn’t bow down to restrictive political pressure under all circumstances. More importantly, it must reform SATs to better capture student excellence, and eliminate all unnecessary fees that come with test taking. Only then can it live up to its motto to “connect students with college success.”
