You only “had to” pay $11.25 per school because you CHOSE to apply early, to schools which require the testing.
It’s all about choices.
If they did their job well, it would be one thing but the screw up over sending thousands of scores due to their decision to switch over to a new system in October, weeks before the Early Decision deadline is inexcusable. Even if all schools agree to accept the delayed scores, the amount of stress caused by the College Board is incalculable. Honestly, switching their system in October (as opposed to say May or June when no one is applying to College) is like an accountant switching his computer system on April 1st, two weeks before tax season.
Honestly, if they’re gonna charge me out the ass I’d appreciate it if they could not screw me over. The College Board screwed up the June SAT, and now they’re sending my scores late. I ordered 4 scores on the sixteenth to schools with Nov. 1 deadlines, now I’m possibly facing disqualification of my EA applications. It’s annoying and these people have every right to be upset.
You are being overly dramatic. They aren’t going to disqualify your app if the scores get there a few days late.
Let me begin by saying how impressed I am that several of you are paying your own way on this issue. Most of the kids I teach have had their parents put it on a charge card; I’m absolutely going to mention tomorrow in homeroom that a number of the kids here are paying for College Board to forward their scores.
But the EA deadlines have been in place for ages. Anytime you rely on technology of any sort to work at the last minute, the odds are pretty overwhelming that you’re going to be disappointed.
The Common App opened on August 1st. It’s now November 1st. Essays, applications, ordering scores— all those materials could have been taken care of any time during the past 3 months. The scores could have been ordered when you signed up for the test… that deadline was October 1.
I’m giving a PreCalc test on Thursday. If I ever for a moment thought I could run it off on Wednesday, I would be facing serious disappointment. (I made it up today; I’ll plan to run it off tomorrow.) If my grades have to be entered on the computer on a Wednesday, you can bet your life that they’ll be done by Monday.
The point is that any deadline should be padded. Any time you’re dealing with technology-- especially on the scale of thousands and thousands of kids all facing the exact same deadline on a matter that means so very much to you-- things need to be done ahead of time. If you don’t trust me, ask all those thousands of people who try to submit their tax returns electronically at 11 pm on April 15.
I would imagine that if you could verify the day you ordered the scores-- say, with a copy of the verification email-- your guidance counselor could send it and you would be covered.
Check out the home page of the College Board. It is an admission that they messed up. Whether it is enough to convince schools like U Michigan to permit students who paid for scores to be sent on October 15 for a November 1 deadline remains to be seen.
@bjkmom Not everyone with scores pending had the option to order score reports far earlier. There are doubtless some students who took the SAT looking to better their previous SAT scores or ACT scores, and didn’t know if they would be sending SAT scores for early action until Oct. 22. Having paid for the College Board’s “rush reporting” at $31 a pop for a service that costs the CB the same as a regular report, there’s an expectation that they’d get what they paid for.
There are also those students like myself, who ordered score reports in mid-October and are still waiting. The EA deadlines aren’t as forgiving as they seem - my HS starts classes well into September, and my teacher recs (which I asked for then) were only completed this past week despite considerable poking and prodding. Fine-tuning essays takes time as well - and submitting an application in mid-September means less time to do so.
When there’s an expectation of a “non-profit” like the College Board performing a service, and they fail to do so, the blame doesn’t lie with the customer. It lies with the service provider, in the same way someone who misses a flight because their taxi driver chose to drive at 20 mph on a clear highway isn’t to blame.
I applied to one of my early schools in part because, if I get in, that’ll allow me to take 3-4 equivalent schools off my list immediately. My scores are still pending. I very much doubt the College Board will be paying for 3 of my applications if I get kicked to regular (as seems likely given the college’s recent statements), or even the 3 additional score reports I’ll need to send if that happens. All I have to be grateful for is the fact that this school isn’t my first choice.
As for students who’ve rushed scores to apply EA, will get sent to RD by their first choice because of this foul-up, and are eventually rejected from their EA school, what is the College Board going to tell them? Will they say “Don’t worry, not a single one of you would have been accepted EA?” I doubt that’ll fly. Or will they argue that with a $31 refund they’ve made amends?
I, for one, would love to see this become a class-action lawsuit.
To be perfectly honest, given the money that the CB makes by selling so much student data to the colleges and universities, sending test scores should be free.
Alright @intparent maybe I am being a tad dramatic, however, it is certainly not the fault of students that the scores haven’t arrived. Blaming the customers in situations like this is how Collegeboard repeatedly justifies its behavior. I paid for a service, and I rightfully expect it to be provided. And not everyone has the luxury of being able to send their scores in bulk months before the deadline. I’ve applied to 22 colleges, there is absolutely no way that me or my parents could afford to spend upwards of 225 dollars on this thing. If college board is going to promise to send scores in 1-2 days or in 1-2 weeks, then they should expect people to be very angry if they’re late. It is so frustrating to see people on this board defend collegeboard because “we should have been more prepared”, or “because we should have done this already”. This is entirely the fault of the Service provider.
22 schools, seriously? Why?
I haven’t figured out why the CSS is $9 for the application and $16 per school to send?! I am applying for financial aid, so I am paying money to ask for more money?
@bjkmom The first four are free ONLY if you request before the exam. Who wants to do that? What if I get a bad score? Yes, I HAVE TO DO IT; all the colleges I am applying to require SAT scores sent by the college board.
I think you are looking in the wrong direction to complain about this. 22 schools is ridiculous.
Regarding paying to ask for money, the College Board doesn’t grant your FA, so you are paying them for the service of putting the data in the format that the colleges want it in and asking the specific questions colleges ask for. Waivers are available for low income students. You may end up with as much as a $40,000 price break at a school from going through the CSS process – but if you don’t want to ask, keep the $16 in your pocket and don’t apply.
While I agree that the score sending process could be more efficient, I don’t know why anyone thinks it should be free. They need programmers, servers, networks, staff to answer questions, etc. to process the request to send scores. Same thing with handling the CSS Profile data. I assume you do want them to pay security architects to keep your data safe when being stored and transported, right?
@intparent I don’t understand why I have to pay them to send an email. I’ve already spend $600 on college board throughout my high school career with AP and SAT Tests. The least they could do is send a fricken email for free.
@intparent I understand that 22 schools is an unorthodox number of schools, but I don’t think you are in a position to call it a ridiculous number, you aren’t aware of my personal circumstances. Heck, at the school I go to the CC standard 8 colleges would be too expensive to send scores to in bulk. Also, I think a lot of complaints are directed at the cost and the overall mishandling that the Collegeboard has been known for recently. It’s probably ridiculous to suggest that it should be free, but 12 bucks a pop and 30 extra for them to send it in 2 business days is absolutely ridiculous, and I’m surprised that people think otherwise.
Let’s consider some numbers.
Last year, 1.67 million students took the SAT. They paid between $52.50 and $101.50 to take the test. For the sake of this post, I’ll assume it actually does cost the College Board $52.50 to ship a booklet to and from a test center and put an answer sheet into a test-reading machine, with some allowance made for diffuse costs like that of designing the test.
Now we arrive at the score report stage. If every student who takes the test applies to 3 schools on average (a not unreasonable estimate, IMO. If anything, it’s low, but I realize CC posters are hardly a representative sample), that’s 5 million score reports. You can quibble with some of these numbers - not all test-takers apply to college, more than a quarter of students now apply to 7 colleges or more, 3 colleges is the 20th percentile among applicants - but let’s pretend they all even out to 3 applications per student with SAT scores, and 5 million score reports overall.
If we assume very few students pay the fee for rush reporting, and set the average cost of a report at $12 (which is almost certainly low, but I’m not going any higher with an uninformed estimate), the CB brought in $60 million and change from score reporting fees last year.
I have difficulty believing that what we’re seeing is a $60 million system in action. “Two-bit” comes to mind as a better estimate.
I wonder what it costs to open a school building on a weekend. Presumably there’s a standard number of custodial & security hours involved. Also, and I really am not familiar with this, but do the proctors work for free? Figure $40/hr each? Would you do it for less than 1.5 the rate of your weekday job? Don’t think I would.
The point is, that no one posting here knows their actual costs or margins. Is information security free? Are the requests actually automated? I don’t know.
It just seems really weird to think about spending 40-60k for a school then getting real thrifty about a 10-15 dollar reporting service. I knew of a guy who took his Porsche with a dry sump oil system to a generic oil change place to save a few bucks. It didn’t go well.
Just for the sake of argument…who do you think pays for the development of the test, the creation on the algorithm to score and program the computer to score, hire and pay copyright attorneys, fact check and gather info, send the reports, pay the essay scores, etc? So the actual cost to the CB is more than just the immediate test etc. Not saying there is not substantial profit, just that there are lots of costs to the final CB products.
Now if they can give me 4 free reports at the time I take the test, why does it cost me $ to send 4 reports if I chose to wait until I see my score is another story. You should get “x” number of free reports to use at your decretion.
If you want your October SAT score to be sent in time for Nov 1, you need to put the schools that you want the scores sent to on your SAT registration paper. And that is free.
If you wait until Oct 22 to see the score and then send it you run the risk that it get’s there too late. Even with rush service, which costs extra.
If you are taking the SAT in Oct for Nov 1 applications you are really cutting it close and can’t afford to look at the score first “in case it’s bad”, because you should have taken an earlier SAT then.
If you qualify for reduced lunch and get a SAT fee waiver you can get 4 free score reports with the SAT. Some schools even accept the SAT score to be reported by the high school on the transcript.
@nobelcollegekid Lots of kids use the free score choice, my daughter used her’s for her first choice school and two extras just in case and to send her score to National Merit. It think it’s wasteful to not use the four free scores. If you think you might get a bad score then you are not ready to take the test.