After a technical glitch caused a headache for thousands of Advanced Placement test-takers last week, the College Board has come up with a backup plan for students to submit their tests if their browsers fail.
As of Monday, students who encounter an error that prevents them from submitting their tests will be able to send them via an email address immediately after finishing their browser-based AP exams.
Instructions on how to do so will appear on the error page that beings with “We Did Not Receive Your Response,” College Board said, effective for Monday’s tests and going forward.
The email address provided will be unique to each student who encounters a technical disruption.
This semester’s round of advanced placement exams, which some colleges accept as class credit, were marred with technical errors in their first week after moving online during the coronavirus pandemic.
Thousands of students — including some in the D.C. region — expressed their outrage on social media after completing their exams only to be told they’d have to retake them this June.
A Change.org petition started before Monday’s fix had logged more than 12,000 names calling on the College Board to allow for a second chance at resubmitting.
“Now we might have to retake our tests several weeks from now or lose our chance to get college credit,” it read.
“This would cut into the free time we’d been looking forward to enjoying with our families and friends after all our hard work.”
The College Board’s Monday announcement did not address students who encountered the glitch and were unable to submit their results before May 18.
It said Monday that 2.186 million students had taken exams in the first week of the non-profit’s two-week testing period.
If the College Board’s 99% figure of successful tests submission is accurate, more than 21,000 students may have encountered the error.
The College Board maintains a list of best practices on its website to avoid problems on exam day, including using Google Chrome, disabling browser plugins and extensions, and leaving ample time to submit results at the end of each test.
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