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Comment by bnj | Hacker News Reader

Are colleges even going to accept high scores on these exams for credit / advanced placement?

It's a shame the college board decided to go through all this instead of refunding the fees they collected from students, especially when the value proposition on the students' side is uncertain.

Add in behavior like "posting content to confuse and deter those who attempt to cheat" when internet research during the exam is not actually a violation of their rules, and the organization starts to look fairly predatory.

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Do universities have a choice?

My local school system is guaranteeing students that their grade will not be lower than when they closed schools. Many classes had not yet had any kind of exam, so they have 95% averages.

Universities obviously believe that any grades from the semester are now worthless and some have said so. But what are they going to do? Not accept any local students?

Every metric you might use to admit students has been tainted by this COVID business.

I think universities are necessarily going to rely more on the "soft" aspects of applications to select students. It won't be a problem for top colleges - they could probably toss out the entire admitted class twice over and still select a world-class pool of students from the application pool.

I think it might be problematic for T2-T3 schools and state schools that are generally lenient when accepting AP credit. As for graduate and professional schools... that's going to be a mess. Harvard Medical School will only consider COVID Pass/Fail grades if colleges make those grading schemes mandatory for students; otherwise, students will have to submit letter grades. That's (1) completely heartless and (2) an arbitrary advantage for students who went to schools where P/F is mandatory.

Presumably a lot of admittance decisions have already been made. These are about AP exams--basically placing out of college courses--so not a huge deal overall (especially at more selective schools).

Honestly, the bigger issue for a lot of students at the moment is the uncertainty over the degree to which schools will open up for physical classes in the fall. What makes sense under those circumstances? And, of course, a lot of the usual gap year options aren't going to be available either.

The issue is for applications next year when these courses should have been at the centre of applications.

Those kids could retake normal proctored tests November, assuming the world stops burning and CB seta up testing.

I think we are going to see that it means nothing.

Andy Grove got his education at City College when it was open admission.

Missing a semester of grades isn’t going to ruin SUNY Stony Brook it whatever.

Andy Grove got his degree in 1960. City College went open admission in 1969. City College was tuition free, but fairly competitive.

(12 Nobel Laureates graduated from City College before it went open admission, none since.)

Those "soft" sides of the applications are even easier to game than cheating on a home test. Virtually NONE of it is ever verified.

...and I wouldn't worry about the top colleges. Having worked in admissions at one of them - a majority of the students are there due to family connections.

> Do universities have a choice?

Anecdotal, but I do remember being told that every state school in Texas is required to offer credit for every AP exam score >= 3. Doesn't have to be useful credit, mind you, but it has to be credit.

I believe the College Board surveyed universities on whether they’d take these virtual exams for credit. Most institutions said yes.

edit: really? respond instead of downvoting.

Cambridge International Examinations (UK based high school board for O/A levels) is giving students grades on their O/A levels based on the grades they got in their last few internal school exams [1].

Universities will pretty have to accept them if they want a reasonable intake of students.

[1] https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/covid/

In the US, AP tests aren't really used for admissions—that primarily falls on the SAT/ACT, GPA and the more subjective things (essay, rec letters, etc). AP tests mainly are just for the college credit.

Some schools don't just accept the scores as-is. After getting a 5 on AP Chem, I had to pass another entrance exam and take a freshman organic chem class to get the AP credit

I think the most likely scenario will be either additional testing administered by the university like you experienced or generic credits towards a degree with a requirement that students still take Chem 101 or whatever.

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