[NABS-L] College Board: AP Scores and Experience with Accommodations

[Seyoon Choi]

Greetings students,

I hope, for those of you currently in Vegas for the federation student reunion are having a blast so far, but whether you are attending the convention or not, I wanted to bring up a topic of discussions to better understand College Board and your experiences, if had any. I was a high school student who took three advanced placement (AP) courses both my junior and senior year and have subsequently took exams in order for potential college credit chances. I have recently took an AP psychology exam with all the necessary accommodations, consisting of braille testing materials, extra time and a reader/scribe to help with recording my answers to the text booklet. College Board typically releases AP scores right around first week of July, and the procedures remained the same for this year’s score release schedule. I’ll be honest… My score was not what I’ve quite expected, but seemed lower compared to my confidence level and given the fact that I typed my free response questions (FRQ) portion of the exam as stated according to my provided accommodations. My psych teacher and I have both contacted College board and was told that certain portion of the test were invalid and that they will be reevaluating my exam. This seemed to somehow indicate a mishap during the grading process when it came to dealing with either the typed up FRQ responses or somewhere where they might have missed something, just a thought. There was an incident last year when College Board decided to not provide any Braille testing materials for both my US government and English lang exams, which was equally frustrating… Both my school and I contacted College Board to request Braille exams but was told that “There isn’t enough time to send it out” resulting in a reader reading an entire test out loud… Essay/FRQ portions without pieces of evidence to pull from directly in front of me was awfully convenient, well, not so much… Long story short: my typed prompts were deemed unacceptable because the rest of the exams were on paper according to college board, but with enough pressure they were able to bump up my scores accordingly. Given how much frustrations and lack of coordinations and understanding that College Board have with blind students, I would love to know if you  have 1:  been in a similar situations or 2: your best methods/approach to deal with companies like College Board when it comes to accessibility. 

Best regards,
Seyoon

Seyoon Choi
Saint Louis University Class of 2023
blindinsighter at gmail.com
314-650-8306