Abby Silverman

2025 AP Tests in May are going online, while others are staying on paper.

This upcoming May, Benilde-St. Margaret’s students in Advanced Placement (AP) classes will face differences in the style of their AP tests. For the first time, 28 AP tests will be moved to either completely online or hybrid versions of online and written. Navigating the Internet and technology may pose challenges for administrators and test takers; however, delivering and receiving tests is more efficient, cheaper, and the risk of cheating is mitigated.

16 exams are transforming to fully online, 12 exams are going hybrid, which means the multiple choice section will be online, the free response questions (FRQ) will be on paper, and 10 exams will stay majorly written. There is an exception for online turn-in for art portfolios and language-speaking portions of tests. The 2025 May tests are switching to online because there has been a history of cheating issues, short notice cancellations, and an increased number of students purchasing stolen exam materials. Digitalizing exams grants flexibility for schools on block schedules for administering, and online helps students respond quicker with faster typing. Additionally, cheating is diminished, as high-security digital sending to proctors and graders ensures confidentiality, rather than the previous method of shipping exams to different testing locations weeks in advance.

AP tests, whether online or written, have the same structure, duration, sections, questions, and timing. The multiple choice questions as well as free response questions, are accumulated to an average of two-three hours long. On these exams, annotating, highlighting, and marking up questions is helpful, and Blueblook, the online exam app, will make these tools easier and more accessible. The FRQs on AP English and history exams are mostly going fully online. The nature of these multiple-choice and FRQ questions includes textual analysis and interpretation.

Grading is more efficient with the ease of sending in answers and typed responses, ensuring that graders are reading legible, quality work. As an AP Spanish teacher and College Board grader, Mary Murray reads responses from AP tests and he doesn’t mind reading the written answers. “I think that the FRQs or the DBQs should remain on paper. I know it’s a pain because you have to scan them … but I think there’s something important [in] hav[ing] those kids writing,” Murray said.

There are downfalls to technology. Some schools are less experienced with technology, leading to slower typing and possible issues with starting and proctoring the tests. For math and science tests, it is almost impossible to draw and write calculations or models online with the same speed and efficiency as drawing on paper. Furthermore, excessive periods staring at computer screens can cause blurry vision, watery eyes, and headaches, which might decrease the performance of students. Jeff Cohen, a BSM AP history teacher, is preparing students for a completely online AP European History exam, with the difficulties of technology in mind. “I think it stresses their eyes, their brains, in ways that they don’t realize. I wouldn’t want to stare at a screen for three and a half hours,” Cohen said.

Many teachers also disagree with the format of free response test taking and the “ease” of annotating online, “I don’t like the idea of students having to write essays online typing. I know students are fast typers, but you just don’t get that same experience of marking up documents and annotating,” Cohen said.

Generally, all math and science exams are half online, and half on paper, whereas English and history tests are all online, and art and language tests are written. Lisa Bargas, BSM’s AP chemistry teacher, is preparing her students to take the multiple-choice portion online and the FRQ portion on paper. “I just gave our first AP chem quiz online. We haven’t done anything online yet, so I’m trying to get people used to it. [But] it’s just impossible to draw or write [online] if you’re being asked to draw a model or do a Lewis structure, you can’t do it [online],” Bargas said.

For this year, all AP language tests will be on paper, except for speaking recordings submitted online. Art and language tests are the only tests without multiple choice or free response questions answered online, and Murray believes it is because the College Board is testing out online testing for less widely taken exams, and using the results to see if all tests should go online before changing them all immediately. “I read for these tests in June as an AP reader, the AP Spanish laying test is one of the largest tests that the College Board does. Last year, we had 185,000 people take it around the world,” Murray said.