COVID-19 puts a twist on this year’s AP exams. In response to worldwide closures, Collegeboard has modified their upcoming testing procedures.

Between May 11 and May 22,  38  new online tests will begin to be administered at their prospective times, according to collegeboard.org. 

As opposed to most year’s testing environments with pen and paper, students from all of the city gathered, and extensive questions, each exam will be 45 minutes long, open notes/book, and taken from personal devices at home. 

“I know a lot of people who had submission errors and will have to retake,” said senior Noah Siraj, who took several AP exams in the first week of AP testing. 

An article from the San Francisco Chronicle provided some statistics on those errors. 

“On May 12, College Board said that approximately 1% of the more than one million students who took the exams, given in 38 subjects, encountered technical difficulties. That’s roughly 10,000 kids who prepared, paid $94 each and sat through the 45-minute online program,” said reporter Aidin Vaziri.

“Some students have to retest in June,” said senior Katie Kerrigan. 

Because of COVID-19, students need to adapt to different testing variations. College Board tweeted to inform students to update camera settings in order to upload photos of their work. After a closer look, they said they “found that outdated browsers were a primary cause of these challenges.”

Other inequities seem to exist.

“I had the AP Government test, and the questions were harder than I thought they would be,” said senior Lindsay Locke. “But everyone got different sets of questions…I think the questions should all be the same difficulty. Hopefully, when they grade them, they will notice that some scores for certain questions are lower than others and adjust.”

AP teachers have a thing or two to say about this year’s testing.

“One thing I feel strongly about is that students should get at least 50 % of their money back given the ridiculous nature of the exams being only 45 minutes long,” said AP government teacher Andrea Stover.