After Spring Break, the tests start piling up, and fast, including SATs, AP exams, and finals. However, many students taking the AP exams this year will experience a very different testing day, as 28 AP exams, many of which are offered at DHS, are going digital, according to the College Board Website.
With the 22 AP classes available for students to take at DHS, only one will stay on paper, which is the AP Spanish Language exam. Despite being digital, the testing experience might look slightly different for various subjects.
Many math and science classes, including AP Calculus AB and BC, AP Chemistry, and AP Macroeconomics, among others, will be hybrid-digital. According to the College Board website, this means that “Students complete multiple-choice questions and view free-response questions in Bluebook. They handwrite their free-response answers in paper exam booklets that are returned for scoring.” This is due to the need to graph or write symbols and equations for these exams that cannot be done online. The other exams, such as AP World History, and AP Literature, as well as others, will be fully digital.
AP Biology teacher Erik Skaggs said that the biggest challenge will be “getting students used to the digital format, of like, the actual test.” The AP Biology exam will be hybrid-digital, and Skaggs said he will have to make sure his students are used to not being able to annotate, and using the digital tools like highlights, calculators, and reference sheets.
These exams will be administered through Bluebook, an app on Chromebooks that also administers the PSAT and SAT testing, that was developed by College Board, who oversees both the SAT/PSAT and AP testing.
This change is a big adjustment for both AP students and teachers. Junior Maddie Dubois said that she’s excited for the multiple choice format, but not about typing the written portions of many tests, including Free Response Questions (FRQs), Long Essay Questions (LEQs), and other essays that are part of exams like AP US History and AP Language, due to having to check for spelling. She said that, “I write in cursive, and so if I don’t know what something is I’ll switch to cursive,” but she won’t be able to do this on some of her tests this May. However, she won’t prepare any differently for the exam.
The rise of the digital exams comes from concerns over the vulnerability of paper exams. According to the College Board website, “Unfortunately, this year [2024], we saw a rise in bad actors compromising AP Exam content for financial gain.” Because the paper exams must be shipped weeks before, it leaves them at risk for students to find them and distribute the exam material, which could result in large-scale score cancellations affecting many students who took the tests honestly.
This transition is welcomed by many students, including Sophomore Shreya Vaidya. The online interface will, she said, be easier for students, because “quite often I’ve heard kids messing up their answers because they don’t know what column they were working on,” in reference to multiple choice questions. The online test has individual pages for each question, making it harder to put the wrong answers, whereas the old paper tests required bubbling in answers that could be skipped on accident.
The Bluebook app has student-friendly features such as highlights and notes, a Desmos calculator, and built-in reference sheets. The material and sections will stay the same as the paper exams. According to the College Board website, it easily allows for integration of various student accommodations such as extended time and text-to-speech. It also eliminates time needed for filling out papers and bubbling in letters for student’s names.
In reference to the test format and how it will affect his students, Skaggs says he’s “going to keep an open mind,” and wait until the scores are released in July to compare from previous paper tests.
AP exams start at DHS on Monday, May 5, 2025. Many students will take a range of tests at DHS, with the majority on the computer. The new digital testing will be self-timed, making exam proctor’s jobs easier as they don’t have to time the exam anymore.
Despite the changes, many students and teachers are excited for the digitized tests. Vaidya echoed this, saying that “I think it’s really good they’re doing it digitally now.”
