The one-year anniversary for the school shutdown has just passed, and that means AP exams are rolling around the corner like a high-speed car with sanded tires that is actively enveloped in flames and blasting 100 gecs from the miraculously-functional speakers. For the all-new online AP exams, CollegeBoard has completely revamped the system, even creating their own app that all students must download before taking their exams in May or June. Students have been speculating about the exam format, with rumors that the test will be fully multiple choice. That particular rumor has been confirmed and a new report has just revealed that the technology for the app is just the website uQuiz, an online quiz making tool, downloaded and rebranded with the CollegeBoard logo. When news outlets reached out to officials, they defended their choice and revealed that students would actually be receiving their personality results at the end of each hour-long test.
I reached out to a CollegeBoard official whose address I knew and who had liabilities I could exploit. “We wanted something to be intuitive to the youth, that they already knew how to use. uQuiz just seemed like the best option—and who doesn’t want to know what brand of medieval monk they would have been?” After asking for more context, I discovered that learning which medieval monk you were was not for the AP European History exam, but AP Physics C: Mechanics. There seems to be no rhyme or reason between tests: AP Latin assigns you a type of breakfast sandwich; AP World History which of the seven deadly sins you are (initially, they thought there was a glitch, as all the CollegeBoard executives they tested it on kept getting greed); AP Earth Science which syllable of “effervescent” vibrates at the resonance of your soul; AP Music Theory which BTS member you should date. Students taking portfolio-based exams shouldn’t worry about missing out: CollegeBoard has set up AP Art to be a multiple choice format. Each question corresponds to a piece in your portfolio with an image for each possible answer. Students will simply choose the image which most closely resembles their own piece. Directly after taking the exam, students will get their personality results, but will have to wait months—and pay good money—to receive their scores.
CollegeBoard has stated emphatically that the scores will only be released in July: “I want to clear away any misconceptions students may hold that personality results correlate with their performance. The personalities are based on the vibes of the answers alone.” So if any students are comparing results, a BLT is no more likely to signify a five than a Turkey Melt (although anyone getting a Turkey Melt on a personality test should seriously consider counseling). The official also explicitly warned those taking the AP Calculus exam: “The associated personality test is actually which number between one and five encapsulates the general feel of your family trauma, and is not indicative of your actual score.”
A major criticism is that students will only be able to take one question at a time, and will be unable to change their answers after each question. This restriction, however, is meant to ensure the accuracy of the results. “If people are allowed to waffle on their answers, they’ll game the system. We want students to select their answers through intuition, not reasoning or using the other questions. I mean, we wouldn’t want someone who’s really meant to be a Benedictine monk fooling us all into thinking they’d be a Franciscan. That’s just not right!”
It became clear, however, that CollegeBoard had attempted to buy the actual scored quiz feature that uQuiz offers, but realized that would automatically display the scores to students and employed no one with the technological prowess to fix the issue. All of their programmers were focused on making sure that the exams would conveniently crash just before the end of the submission period. I questioned the official, who admitted, after prodding, mild extortion, and threatening their two siamese cats named Corporate and Corruption with a spray bottle, the reason for artificially creating this grading delay: “All of our buildings are actually supplied by generators that run off of the general misery and anxiety in high school students, and while we would certainly get some from those getting 1s, it wouldn’t really be enough suffering for us to get by. It’s either making students wait for months to see their scores and whether they are good enough to get into the college of their dreams, or continuing to sabotage the release of Lorde’s third album. Is that so bad of us?” I raised my spray bottle. Maybe they should’ve listened to “Liability” from Melodrama more frequently.
APRIL FOOLS’!
