Hi everyone, I’m a student who wants to pursue CS and is applying to a couple of top schools like MIT and Stanford. This past year, College Board exams like AP Stat and AP CSA experienced so many technical issues ( in my case, not even being able to access the formula sheet or see the code prompts for minutes on end) that the College Board offered free retakes for students for those exams. I am someone with testing anxiety, and when I encountered these issues, I was significantly distracted, so I contacted my AP coordinator to see if I could retake the exam just a day after I found out this opportunity was being offered. My school coordinator told us that they were not participating due to scheduling conflicts with the testing rooms. I received a 3 and will not report this score to colleges that do not require all scores reported, but for Stanford and MIT, I was thinking of explaining this in the additional info section. However, some people are telling me to just not bring attention to the score.
Oh, they will absolutely notice on their own.
Personally, I wouldn’t elaborate. But if you do, you need to be much more succinct — testing irregularities; didn’t retake.
On second thought, don’t mention it at all, since nothing positive will come from admitting that you didn’t avail yourself of the retake and didn’t push your school to allow the approved retake
I agree that they will notice on their own; all my other scores are 5’s and one 4 in AP World (9 exams).
Not sure how not elaborating would help me in this case. The students weren’t even notified of the opportunity: the College Board sent an email directly to coordinators and made it optional for schools to participate. I only found out through a neighboring school offering the opportunity, and I contacted them as well. They said I would not be allowed to sit the retake there as I did not attend.
You need to give some thought to being at a place like Stanford with testing anxiety. Perhaps you can find some schools with a “chiller” environment and strong CS departments? Because neither MIT nor Stanford seems like a fit….
Don’t “excuse” your score - just leave it be.
I get where you’re coming from, and you’re right that schools like Stanford and MIT are intense. But I think testing anxiety doesn’t have to define my entire college experience. I’ve been building strategies to manage it, and I’m also looking at other schools as well. Student populations are not a monolith, no matter how high-caliber a school may be.
Making excuses and blaming others would not help you.
If an institution admits to a mistake to the point that they are offering free retakes, how is that and excuse?
to be clear: I’m not blaming anyone, I recognize the score is ultimately mine. What I was asking about is whether providing context in the additional information section would help admissions officers understand the situation, since the technical issues were acknowledged by the College Board itself.
You did not avail yourself of the retake. So any explanation you give will read like “My mean school wouldn’t give me the offered makeup, and I accepted their decision without escalating.”
Students don’t usually have the leverage to override school/district testing logistics. I made another attempt by contacting the other schools coordinator as well.
However if not including this information makes no difference, then I suppose my chances are the same regardless of the exam score.
OP, I’ve not gone through the college app process before, but I’ll say that a very short and simple, “Testing irregularities on the day; unable to retake” seems like an easy thing to add in additional information and would not seem to be a big issue. I don’t know if it will work or not, but it seems reasonable to me.
It seems like the OP was not given the option to retake as their school chose to offer it.
Plus every school has tests - and if you have testing anxiety, that will be anywhere and to some extent major dependent.