Another incompetence of the College Board

<p>Just want to vent another incompetence of the College Board and their people administering the test. My son took a subject test about a week ago and they were cut short. Student complained at the time but the person administering the test insisted she has the correct official time.</p>

<p>Well, just got a priority mail today that there are inconsistence with test and that student has the option to cancel score or retake the test for free. (Free? we should get a refund!) Seniors are already stressed out with SAT tests, college applications, etc. Such mistake should not happen. The College Board should be FINED.</p>

<p>Luckily my son already been accepted ED. The test score will not be a factor for him for college application but we will leave up to him if he wants to retest. I just feel sorry for the kids to have to sit thru that test again.</p>

<p>The people who actually administer the test are hired by the testing site, not the College Board. Some of the proctors have a tendency to neglect completing a faithful reading of the instructions.</p>

<p>I am in the same boat! My daughter is accepted early decision, and they want to cancel the scores by giving her 3 choices. Voluntary cancelation, retake or arbitration. If they decide to cancel, college will find out. Then what?? She got into college because she is good in sports plus this score!</p>

<p>CB sent an incomplete score report for my kid -- they left off his last three subject tests and his last reasoning test. We ordered the report over two and half months before deadline, but the correct scores didn't arrive until four weeks AFTER the deadline. It was a fluke that we even discovered that the college wasn't looking at a complete score report.</p>

<p>CB needs oversight. No customer service. They are widely thought to be infallible, and no one ever questions or checks up on them. This sort of thing is probably more commonplace than we know.</p>

<p>totally agree dude. I made a similar thread complaining about CB but it got deleted b/c I wasn't using appropriate language (haha i was very ticked :D). But yeah, the customer service and organization of CB is pretty bad :( Its been 6 weeks since I ordered hand scoring, and I got an email from them saying I'll have to wait another 3 weeks b/c I didnt fill out a form (and I was told b4 by them that I didnt need to fill it out). So yeah, they're telling me different things everytime I call them ;(</p>

<p>A long and painful story for us, which will be hard to summarize here. He took the test in Oct and made a gridding error in how where he placed the scores for one section. Before erasing and fixing the error, he was told by two proctors to leave it alone, that his test would be hand scored, not problem, no delay. That was confirmed 2 days later by customer service rep on phone. </p>

<p>When scores were not reported on time, I began hours of calls to service people and supervisors, all of who were so freaking nice, and so full of crap. They promised many things (in terms of results, timing, and returned phone calls), none of which came thru. Eventually I badgered them into getting me in contact with an exec, who did finally come thru with test results. But the scores were way below his history of scores on other standardized tests, so they were obviously wrong. At this point, it was too late anyway, and he had gotten much better ACT scores, so we pulled the plug on using any of his SAT scores for any school.</p>

<p>Overall it was one of the most frustrating experiences I have run across, and I agree that the whole College Board operation needs to be more accountable and supervised. </p>

<p>If anyone is curious about the exact details of our case, I took voluminous notes on every phone call, and have prefaced those with a good summary. Not sure it is as good as a Stephen King novel, but might be interesting, Let me know and I will forward it to you,</p>

<p>Peter</p>

<p>"I began hours of calls to service people and supervisors, all of who were so freaking nice, and so full of c...p. They promised many things (in terms of results, timing, and returned phone calls), none of which came thru. Eventually I badgered them into getting me in contact with an exec, who did finally come thru"</p>

<p>Yes. Exactly what happened to us. But couldn't get an exec from the CB phone line. GC got a contact for us, and then it was on the path to recovery in 72 hours. But it still took many valuable days for the score report to get to the college -- and meanwhile, the EA clock was ticking.</p>

<p>I've got notes and names, too, but who wants to deal with the CB? It's a monolith, responsible to no one. Kind of like AT&T, THE phone company -- oh, wait, -- didn't that get busted up a few decades back??</p>