Due to the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic, the College Board will be offering an altered version of AP exams for students that will only cover material taught until mid-March.
The College Board offers an updated version of the exam schedule on their website, along with changes to exam content and the make-up exam dates.
The exams will now be administered between May 11 and May 22.
“The AP program took the curriculum that students were on pace to learn as of that mid-March date, for most schools across the country,” guidance coordinator Tom Overberger said. “It is going to be a very condensed test.”
Tests will be 45 minutes with a five minute uploading period added to the end of the exam.
“I think they can be both good and bad for students,” junior Marco Clark said. “A much shorter exam isn’t too bad to take at home, where the normal three hour exam would be horrible to do.”
The College Board will also offer full refunds for students who no longer wish to take the exam and make-up exam dates that will be free-of-charge.
Social studies teacher Kim Dudek is modifying her curriculum to give students practice with free response questions and is administering online quizzes. Dudek teaches AP Human Geography.
“We are giving online lessons to review the information starting from unit one and moving through each unit,” Dudek said.
The AP program will also allow the exams to be open-notes.
According to guidance counselor Alison Kircher, the open-notes is not a substitute for studying.
“Students need to take advantage of the time that they have now to study for the upcoming exams and be confident in what they learned this year,” Kircher said.
According to junior Anna Lesher, she is using resources from the College Board’s MyAP website to practice short answer questions for her AP European History exam.
“I don’t see the point in practicing long answer questions or multiple choice if it won’t even be on the test,” Lesher said.
The College Board offers live AP lessons and AP review lessons on their website for students.
According to Kircher, many colleges are promising to honor the scores on AP exams as they have done in years past.
“I think colleges are recognizing that students are putting effort forth from last summer, the whole first half of the year, in terms of gaining new knowledge and that they should be rewarded if they score well on the exams,” Kircher said.
Overberger agrees with this, expecting the majority of colleges to continue to accept the scores for credit.
Dudek is positive, as well.
“I think that there will be a lot of good that comes from this situation,” Dudek said. “I think it forces us all to think differently and many times that is a good thing.”