As April comes to an end, students across the country find themselves balancing the excitement of the approaching end of school while simultaneously making the final push to get through Advanced Placement (AP) exams. As stressful as exams may be, many have recently questioned the value and quality of standardized tests in the grand scheme of college admissions and education as a whole.

Despite the annual recurrence of AP tests, the AP curriculum has changed significantly over time. From the tests cutting down on the number of questions to the exam curve shifting, the overall objective of the tests often feels unclear due to score inflation and reduced rigor. With these changes, the AP tests seem to be following the trend of tests getting easier over time, raising doubts about their ability to accurately reflect students’ knowledge and readiness. With a lack of real value, standardized testing feels more like an enterprise than a system meant to help students.

College Board is a not-for-profit organization that aims to create a cohesive system for college entrance exams. The organization controls a majority of standardized testing, including the SAT, PSAT and AP exams, which all play a major role in college admissions throughout the country. For example, College Board’s National Merit Scholarship Program — awarded based on a National Merit Scholarship Qualifying (PSAT/NSMQT) test score — is a significant achievement in the realm of college admissions. Less than 1% of the nation’s high school seniors qualify as semifinalists. If students become finalists, they will have the chance to earn a $2500 scholarship award to an affiliated college or university in the United States. The PSAT 8/9 has also been a commodity in the world of education. For eighth- and ninth-grade students, this test creates a pipeline that continues through high school exams and standardized testing. As for AP exams, students who receive a three, four or five are often able to receive college credit and can be placed into advanced courses at some universities.

Students who take an AP test often go through an AP curriculum. The AP program was created in the 1950s to make a cohesive system where students were encouraged to go to college, with the overall goal of creating a more productive workforce. During those years, it was a prestigious program, with half of Harvard College’s incoming class participating, and selective, with only 14% of high schools offering the courses. Now, around 75% of high schools offer AP exams, with over 3 million students taking an exam in 2024. 2024 set an all-time high of student participation; there was a 10% increase in the number of exams taken since 2023.

Even with significant participation, the overall value of AP Exams has declined for a few reasons. First, score inflation on the tests is causing a gap in knowledge for those who use AP tests for credit at accredited universities. As a result, some private institutions, such as Brown University, do not accept AP scores for credit. These changes can be traced back to 2022, when the College Board transformed how it set score distributions. Before this time, the AP Exam scoring was reviewed by a small group of 10 to 18 college professors and high school teachers every five to ten years, ensuring that the grading scale stayed relatively stable over time. Under the new grading system of Evidence-Based Standard Setting (EBSS), hundreds of college instructors give input as to what proportion of students receive certain AP scores. Since this group is much larger than the previous group, the standards for the scoring system have become significantly lower, as proven by the number of students earning a five, which increased 61% between 2021 and 2025. 

In skewing results, College Board has also disrupted AP curricula. AP exams are designed by a group of college professors and high school teachers who create a course framework for classrooms across the nation to follow. Each year, College Board and previous AP teachers research and craft exam questions to ensure that the test is at an acceptable proficiency level for a college-level course. However, these courses go through testing development stages every two to six years, and when these edits occur, they have proven to be impactful. 

A significant change occurred during the 2019-2020 school year: AP World History officially changed to AP World History: Modern, shifting the curriculum dates from 8000 BCE to 1200 CE and onward. College Board believed that the previous curriculum was too broad, so they decided to split the class into two parts: a Pre-AP course and the main course, AP World History: Modern. However, many schools have not been able to adopt the Pre-AP course due to large fees, few educators and minimal students willing to take the course due to a lack of college credit. This unwarranted change, extending to several other courses, has forced students in the past six years to study nine units of world history without the prior context to fully understand the coursework. 

AP World History: Modern teacher Kristin works alongside Jim Hermann, who noticed this change within their own curricular plans.

“They restructured the entire curriculum, and people that I know who teach it that way say that it’s so confusing [for students]. That’s why Hermann and I have continued [teaching] the way it used to be taught,” Collins said. 

While College Board has drastically changed some courses, they have also retained the structure and grading scales for others. Because of this disparity, students taking exams from 2020 and 2025 increasingly received fives in AP in English Literature and Composition, AP United States Government & Politics and AP Biology. Yet, less commonly taken APs like AP Music Theory and AP 3D Art and Design had pass rates that decreased or stayed relatively the same. 

AP Music Theory teacher Jacob England has observed minimal change in the AP Music Theory test after AP changed most of its grading system. 

“The exam is fairly difficult. I haven’t seen any large changes since I [took] the exam in high school, and the exam is still on paper, unlike many other ones,” England said.

Beyond the inherently flawed grading scales and poor testing values, in 2024, AP exams generated over $200 million in profit. These high profit margins sparked social and legal concerns, with many believing College Board is earning an excessive amount for a not-for-profit organization. In fact, in company improvements, they spent over $8 million dollars paying their executives, with $1.8 million of it going to their CEO. Instead, this money could be put towards expanding their financial needs services to a broader range of students. 

Apart from College Board’s own gain, many other companies profit from the College Board’s size. Online resources have emerged claiming that they have a “foolproof formula” to earn a five, the highest score given on an AP exam. Companies like the Princeton Review have started tutoring services starting at $215 an hour. This presents a problem as education becomes a business. Companies are beginning to conceal test resources behind paid packages rather than providing accessible resources. This disadvantages lower-income students who cannot afford such services. The growing emphasis on test formulas and methods doesn’t prioritize actual learning; the skills taught in these lessons often focus more on test-taking strategies rather than the actual content of standardized tests. One of the main reasons for taking AP classes is to prepare students for college, but when the foundational knowledge is not being adequately taught, it may hurt students later on in their journey. 

The demographics of AP exam participation also present disparities. In 2022, 30% of Black and Hispanic students enrolled in at least one AP course did not take the corresponding AP exams. Currently, each AP exam taken in the United States costs $99, with additional late fees costing $40. These costs pile up quickly, with nearly 50% of exam takers taking two or more tests. While College Board offers a reduced fee of $37 for low-income students, the overall cost of the exam is still over $50. With a shortage of rural teachers, it’s difficult to provide the same opportunities to study for and actually participate in a standardized test. With a push for more virtual AP courses in recent years, some of these disparate barriers are beginning to be eliminated.

Education should not become a business. While testing is an integral part of student life, it’s unfair for students to solely be used for profit. It is vital to retain a uniform testing and admissions system that provides fair evaluations of students, their course rigor and standardized testing scores. College Board, and other organizations like it, should be held accountable for their lack of transparency, reliability and disparate opportunities. Tests are ultimately made to assess what teachers have taught and what students have learned. When creating, administering, selling and scoring tests, these values should be upheld.