The second week of AP exams began Monday, but it comes after numerous complaints about technology issues with the exams that began online on May 11. Usually exams are given on campus, but due to COVID-19, the College Board moved this year’s tests to an online format. 

“We share the deep disappointment of students who were unable to complete their exam — whether for technical issues or other reasons. We’re working to understand these students’ unique circumstances in advance of the June makeup exams,” College Board spokesman Zachary Goldberg said in a Washington Post article. “Any student who encountered an issue during their exam will be able to retest.”

Numerous students on campus had issues when trying to send in their exam answers. 

“When I hit the submit button nothing happened,” sophomore Abhay Patil said. “It’s definitely not my fault because I had taken all the necessary precautions to prevent any glitches in my test. I also tried signing out of my school account and using my personal account, that has no Chrome extensions, so this is completely on College Board.”

While some students point fingers at The College Board, some teachers are happy with their efforts to make this process as easy as possible.

“I don’t always agree with the way College Board handles things, but I do actually think they are putting forth their best efforts in good faith,” AP Physics teacher Christine Rittenhouse said.  “They had a huge amount of work to do in a relatively short period of time, both on the testing platform development side and the question modification side. There were obviously bugs that didn’t get squashed in time, but the vast majority of kids who wanted to test were able to.” 

For sophomore Asmita Vaddeswarapu, the exam was without any problems until she decided to submit her response.

“I got really upset and frustrated because I felt really confident about my response and the submit button wasn’t cooperating,” Vaddeswarapu said. “I tried submitting my response in the various ways we could submit them. Even after telling my family to stop using their devices, I kept trying to submit until the very last second, and then I got the message saying my response wasn’t received.”

On Sunday, the College Board announced that it will allow some students to email their responses this week. But this does not apply to students who already have taken an exam. For students who had problems with an exam taken May 11-15, they will have to retake the test in June. 

“To protect the security and validity of exams, we’re unable to accept submissions from students who tested May 11-15,” the College Board said in a Washington Post article. “However, these students can feel confident that the email option will be in place for them during the makeup exams.”