Ah, AP exam fees

<p>So for the past couple years, my district paid for a great part of our AP exam fees. We paid something around $20 per test. It was great. But this year, they decided that some students are just taking the exams for fun, and so the district took back their money for paying for AP. Now we have to pay the full price. This year, I have to pay full AP exam fees, and I am thinking about taking 7 tests. You do the math...</p>

<p>Damn, that sucks. Our school makes us pay in full for our exams. Good thing I'm only take 1 this year.</p>

<p>Taking AP exams for fun? Does not compute.</p>

<p>My school pays for all of our AP exams, which is nice for us kids who take 8-10 before we graduate.</p>

<p>Well, I guess it's not really for "fun", but there are some people at my school would just take the test even though they can't possibly even get a 2. Because the district/school was paying for most of the fees, those students just didn't care. I can see the why the district changed their policy on AP fees, but it really sucks for people who are actually taking the test seriously and are taking a whole bunch of them.</p>

<p>I have to pay full price.</p>

<p>lol, I got all of my exams paid by the shcool, though I did have some trouble getting it for the 2 exams I self-studied... me and my mother even had to go and get a check for it after we paid for it in cash. And I think that was after school ended, too...</p>

<p>Yeah, we get all of our AP exams paid for because the majority of us are low income.</p>

<p>what the heck, i always have to pay for all my own tests, and i took two last year, and gonna take 5 this year, and 6 next year. o<em>0 that's a lot of money. -</em>-</p>

<p>^ Exactly! It is a lot especially you're taking a bunch of AP exams. And the thing is that I am taking twice the amount of AP exam as last two years combined. Urg....</p>

<p>unfortunately, I've to pay more than $160 per subject 'cause I'm a home-school student this year……</p>

<p>i have to pay $90 per test.</p>

<p>when this year is over, i'll have taken 10 exams.</p>

<p>i really hate collegeboard.</p>

<p>'i really hate collegeboard.'
I agree^_^</p>

<p>College Board does offer a partial fee waiver for those students in need. Some states even offer additional help on top of the CB. Unfortunately, many schools don't make this information available to students - here's the CB link to look over the options:</p>

<p>AP</a> Exams - AP Fee Waivers & Reductions</p>

<p>whew, i'm thankful for my school.
we don't have to pay unless you have a d or f</p>

<p>so the 16 by the time i graduate would have driven me broke</p>

<p>my EFC is about 20k. there's no way that i would qualify for a fee waiver.</p>

<p>What I've heard that some school districts do is they refund the AP exam fee for any student who passed the exam.</p>

<p>Admittedly, it's a bit more of a hardship to pay the fees in advance and get the refund later, but it would mitigate some of the circumstances detailed in the OP that the district is having, while still encouraging some of the students who would use AP for its intended purpose to take the exam.</p>

<p>[EDIT: A lot of school districts are having some severe financial pains, with a lot of states cutting education funding in order to try to balance state budgets. This may not be an actual response to kids slacking on AP's as much as it is a cost-cutting measure, and the slacking kids are merely an excuse. If that's the case, I would expect a lot more districts to go in this direction if they currently pay for exams for people who don't have financial need.]</p>

<p>@MathProf, that is a very good idea that schools will refund the money for kids that pass. That, I feel, is kind of a motivator to do well on the test.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Admittedly, it's a bit more of a hardship to pay the fees in advance and get the refund later...

[/quote]

Not just a hardship. For people like me, who took 8 AP Exams on senior year, it would be prohibitively expensive. It would make more sense if they were allowed to take the exams and only have to pay for those which they failed, but of course, that would imply that a bureaucracy would be making sense for once.</p>

<p>That happened to my school, too!! We paid 10 dollars two years ago, 30 dollars last year, and we're going to pay full price this year!! And I plan to take 9!! Argh...</p>

<p>We don't have to pay for any of the exams so long as we took their respective courses at the school, but if we want to self-study, we got to pay. Unfortunately, that will probably keep me from self-studying. Oh well, thank goodness there are only 3 I'd want to anyways. My school offers 13 APs, although very few of them have a relatively high pass rate. Human Geo, freshman year, had 180 students taking the exam, and 6 people passed, none got above a 3.</p>