@MorseLewis So annoying! Yes, please call the College Board but also report it to your school/teacher/guidance counselor so your school can also make contact with College Board as well with some stats on the kids who’ve had problems. Be forewarned that hold times with College Board are ridiculous – plan to be doing paperwork, emails, or laundry while you wait!
@Charlie2772 We just can’t pretend these answers are acceptable. Retake is not a panacea! College Board has not come out and said – we’ve fixed the issue, here’s a refund for your wasted time and emotional anguish, please accept our apologies and consider retesting.
My took Human/Geo; Gov/Pol and Lit this week with no problems. Today? Physics? Couldn’t submit it. She has no desire to take it again. She’s a senior; she’s in her number one school early decision - she’s DONE. I’m really sorry for the kids who need these scores. It’s terrible.
Same here. Calc AB went fine (as far as I know) but today there was an error with submitting physics, along with some sort of link to request the makeup.
I’ll be steamed if it’s denied even though Physics 1 doesn’t count for much. Definitely not getting $94 worth today. Here’s hoping next May returns to in-person AP exams.
I was on an admissions webinar this am and the “official” word from College Board was 2% of test takers had issues to date and that testing at home is a success. BS on all of that and hope they begin to tell the truth - as the number has to be a lot higher just based on comments on CC.
My thinking is this: if an especially tech-savvy teen can’t manage submission, the AP product isn’t ready for prime time. Is it better than nothing, I’m not sure. I hope colleges aren’t looking for scores that don’t exist.
Not long ago, our provider (Comcast, I think) installed a filter on our internet that has affected upload speeds, and they did it without informing us officially - I addressed the workers out in the street. They said our internet caused too much “noise” in the neighborhood. I wonder if this may have played a role in the difficulty today.
I just got off the phone with the College Board. The rep told me that they are trying to find a way to investigate these problems and that if they can find a way to accept a student’s work where the student tried to submit but was unable to, they will. He acknowledged that there have been many problems. He was not promising anything, but he did say that there was a “team” looking into these issues.
He told me to fill out a request to retake the exam. I asked him whether doing so would delete the entire submission (my son successfully uploaded the answer to the first question) and he said that normally that would be the case, but not now. This is what he said, but it seems to contradict the information another poster received earlier.
Anyone else receive the same information?
The other question is that my son is not sure whether he received any error message. He did not receive a message stating that he had completed the test, but did not say that he received an error message.
@MorseLewis Maybe since the multiple news reports and calls, College Board is backing away from its previous stance of automatically cancelling the scores. Was the agent you spoke with able to confirm that your son “completed” the exam? Were you able to get the agent’s ID number so if it turns out the previous scores are cancelled, you can refer to that agent and conversation notes?
The agent I spoke to said he was not able to access information that would allow him to see whether the answer had been submitted. I did get the agent’s name and ID number, though didn’t make a record with my son’s ID and name. I’m considering calling back tomorrow to make the record and to refer to my previous call. That is what my son’s AP counselor suggested I do. I just don’t know if I want to sit on the phone for another hour +.
So frustrating, but it seems like it’s been happening to a lot of people so maybe the CB will figure out a way to give students credit if they really tried to submit before the time ran out but were unsuccessful.
Yup. If there’s one good thing to come out of this is that DD is now more nervous about submitting the exam rather than actually taking it. And since that part is largely beyond her control, she commented at dinner that she was much more nervous taking last year’s exam than she is about the one tomorrow.
I’ll be the one on hold with the CB if something goes wrong, and I wrote the check for the test, so I will have difficulty relaxing until it’s over. I’m glad she is in good spirits for this, though.
I have an idea… I think I am going to have DD video record herself taking the entire exam. 90 minutes (thereabouts) of footage, including filling the demographic info and especially the submission process.
The intent is not to film the computer screen and the questions, which might run afoul of the CB rules. There’s no rules, however, about video recording the submission process. I do want all 90 minutes, however, to prove she, in fact, took the test, didn’t cheat, and attempted the upload according to CB’s instructions.
This may not get her out of the makeup test if something goes wrong (I will have her record herself taking that too if necessary), but it will arm her with some reasonably solid evidence just in case the same thing happens during the makeup test as well.
I will set up the camera. She’ll start and stop the recording by herself. She’ll look at the camera, say her name, the date, and the name of the test. Then she’ll sit down and take it with the camera filming her back, head, and shoulders the whole time. She will upload at the end and scoot to the side to allow the camera to see the screen better as her documents either go through or not.
If the upload goes through, the footage will be deleted. If the upload fails, she will have something to show CB… or she decides to take the makeup test and we’ll film her doing that one too.
It feels like I am being paranoid (Has it really come to this?), but the only thing I lose is a few minutes of time setting up and putting away the camera. Cheap insurance? Days into these tests I am not getting any warm feelings that CB plans to make things right for the kids who have had problems.
My daughter has been fortunate and hasn’t encountered any problems yet… she took Physics on Monday, Calc on Tuesday, and Chemistry yesterday. She still has English and French next week. She is most worried about French… she still needs to download the app required to take the test…
@fencingmom Oh, I’m definitely not pretending these answers are acceptable. I’d rather him not have to retake. I was just expressing the CB’s lame response to our guidance department’s attempt to advocate for the students. I’m hoping with enough complaints they will at the very least approve all retakes and truly wishing for a chance for the students to just be able to submit what they already accomplished,
@Groundwork2022 I love the creative thinking behind your idea! CB may decide to do nothing, but they don’t have the testing market cornered outside of subject tests and AP – the later of which is typically administered at the student’s school). They could lose business to ACT, which they have been steadily anyway, especially if testing continues to be online and their response to this is less than stellar.
@RockyPA So glad it’s been smooth sailing. Hope it continues next week, even with the newly downloaded app.
@Charlie2772 Agree on all counts. I was trying to make a more universal statement about CB’s lame response, not call you out. Apologies! Glad you’ve reported the issues to the guidance counselor. My daughter’s school is also mounting a response as they’ve had several kids who’ve had issues.
@Groundwork2022: Are you as calm as you “sound”? I wonder if the kids have all begun some sort of capture-and-drop repository online, deep inside a chat room thread, somewhere.
@MorseLewis : “I just got off the phone with the College Board. The rep told me that they are trying to find a way to investigate these problems and that if they can find a way to accept a student’s work where the student tried to submit but was unable to, they will.”
Explain this to me, please. Is there some portion of the tests which have not successfully submit which are still visible to the test-takers? How could a portion not received by college board ever be granted credit of any sort?
@MorseLewis if you call CB again, could you ask if this were to happen to someone else, would it help any to email the student upload to the ap teacher or a CB e-mail as a record that it was done on time? My D has been fortunate with her 3 tests this week, which I thought was a good sign, but I read on CC of students where one test submits fine and another does not for the same student. D has 2 more tests next week.
Not calm! Going to go to a drive thru that sells ice cream while DD takes the exam ?
I don’t know about all the tests, but DD will be working with Google Docs. At the end she has to save and upload a pdf of her work. A time and date stamp is attached to the file, which should not change unless the file is modified. That remains on her computer and it could be uploaded late or emailed to the CB or teacher or the AP coordinator. So technically the College Board could accept those files. There is potential for cheating at that point, so it may not be a preferred choice from their standpoint. While understandable, the fact remains the problem likely lies in their server being overwhelmed.
IMO they should give the students the benefit of the doubt. These tests, unlike the SATs, don’t need to be used for admissions consideration. So what’s the worst that can happen? A kid pretends to have problems to get away with 5 extra minutes of test time? Unfair, but not going to change history (next time use propriety software instead of Google Docs). If the kid ends up placed in a college class above their head, it won’t be the end of the world. Drop the class and move down a level. Not earth-shattering.
well - issue here for APUSH. dang. hoping a make up is allowed. D23 lost her work and it took her a bit to figure out where it was and how to get it back, and then it was too late to upload. She’s discouraged.
On the other hand, - it’s all ok in the big scheme of things. right?
it’s a whole lesson learned on deadlines, I guess.