In 2025, a major change could drastically affect students’ test-taking experience: the AP exams and SATs distributed by the College Board will consist of a hybrid or completely digital exam for students. For many, this change brings positivity to the exam, but for some, it is an unnecessary or negative change.
Many teachers believe that this change is beneficial and that it could be of use as it takes away the risk of lost tests. “I’ve never experienced this, but I’ve heard horror stories of AP tests disappearing in the mail, like in entire schools, tests will not make it to the College Board,” commented AP World teacher Sarah Straight. This reduced risk is one of the main reasons why the College Board made this major change. According to the “Ivy Coach”, over 106 tests were lost during the 2024 exams. A move to digital more efficiently saves tests online, lowering this risk for students.
What comes with positives also comes with negatives. “I think the one kind of negative downside is that you’re dependent on technology. So I’ve had occasionally kids that, on AP test day, have had struggles like logging in to College Board,” Straight added. Charged Chromebooks and the internet are among the concerns that many have with the test shifting to digital. Others are concerned that the test will not save due to an internet crash.
Other concerns from teachers include the length of the digital tests. “I think that staring at a screen for four hours of the course of the exam is probably not as good,” AP World and AP Economics Teacher Jamie Hill mentioned. Others disagree and feel that this actually brings an advantage as it reduces the stress of writing long responses by hand. “My first AP exam was on paper, and I felt more pressure to write quickly. Now that APs are switching to digital, I have more advantages,” said junior Haley Le.
Students’ views and thoughts seemingly differ, especially from writing-heavy AP classes like computer science. “I don’t understand, because we need to write code but we also need to verify that it works,” said junior Vin Chau. “So we need to write this on paper and potentially draw charts, so I don’t see how this will be possible digitally.”
As AP classes continue and the exam comes closer by the day, teachers and students will continue to work towards this accommodation that will come with the 2025 exams. If you would like to know more about the digital exam experience for the 2025 exams, use this link to the College Board website . “It feels like it’s kind of inevitable that it was heading this way by transferring digitally,” Stright concluded.
