Daughter did the AP demo and said that’s where she found out the need to convert the images from the iphone. Took AP Calc BC today, uploaded image to AP in the last 30 seconds (stressful), but no problem.
DD20 had to find an alternate exam site yesterday for her 4pm AP exam when our power went out a couple of hours before. Enough already!
My daughter has three friends who were unable to upload (two Physics and one Calc) and will need to retake. Feeling thankful hers went through, and now feeling worried for the ones she has next week!
Back to the “surprise pick” among D20’s high school class (N=101): The local Ivy is always the biggest single group (9 this year), and NYU is usually second, but the list of schools with 3 kids from the class attending has some newcomers this year: Tufts, RIT, Macalester, and Columbia (in addition to more typical schools on that “3+” list for us: Barnard, Wesleyan, and Haverford). In general I’d say the class is more “clumped” this year at fewer schools – those 9 schools mentioned above will enroll one-third of the class.
So upset about the Cal state announcement. Not a surprise, but still such a disappointment. We need plans, a test, we can’t just flounder for years until a vaccine. We stayed inside to flatten the curve, but we can’t stay inside forever.
@voyagermom: “My daughter has three friends who were unable to upload (two Physics and one Calc) and will need to retake. Feeling thankful hers went through, and now feeling worried for the ones she has next week!”
Is there any way that the router/modem speed in a home, in use by more than one or two people (in my house by 5 people during the day; one more in the evening), could have impacted what happened to your daughter’s friends while uploading their work?
I know bandwidth can be impacted in terms of getting on the web and just browsing due to a host of features (upload/download speeds, strength of signal) even when not seeking to upload.
Not my bailiwick at all, but curious.
Son says he used the app the college board provides and took a picture of his work from his phone (the one device he was using) and it worked okay. He said one does not need to convert to pdf using this method. He double checked using the demo run that they allow and it works fine.
I would have to assume, if bandwidth did not create the wall the students hit when trying to upload, that they were not aware to employ either method.
My son’s friends said they also were aware of that demo, and yet some of them still hit the wall when uploading. I don’t know if they went outside of either method and simply sought to upload it straight from their phones , but would have to guess that perhaps some missed the demo (as did son).
Ok, never mind my last post – just received email from AP saying “one or more files was corrupt, so exam could not be marked as complete.”
Yet both her images loaded and were in the file format they specified. Very annoying. Not sure she cares enough to take a retest in June.
@fencingmom: Sorry to learn of that turn of events. This is simply an awful time for so many of our wonderful young people.
AP for Students tweeted last night that outdated browsers were responsible for the vast majority of upload/submit problems. Update your browsers - the CB website probably has more information. So sorry for the added anxiety (and pushing the finish line til June) for these kids.
I’m not sure. One was at home with two parents working from home, so perhaps a bandwidth issue. The other was by herself and I have not heard of general internet issues from them. Both had been able to do the test version uploads fine. I have heard this morning from both of their moms that other friends of theirs had issues as well.
d20 had the most recent browser, used Chrome (which College Board recommended), took the demo, and uploaded images as they specified. Still had “one or more corrupted files” – and now discovered a few other classmates had the same issue.
I’m thankful she would have been using the score as an assessment tool, and not for credit but still, to have done all the work (prep, demo, testing) with no result, it’s a bit of a let down.
Best of luck to all on AP exams!
What are your kids doing this summer? This is the first summer that mine has nothing lined up (no summer programs/activities, classes, etc.). She’s applied for a few jobs (grocery stores, Target, etc.) but no luck yet. She will apply to a few more this week. I don’t think her school allows for incoming first year students to take their online summer session classes. After a very busy 4 years of high school, and knowing that she will be starting a challenging program in the fall, I’m trying to reconcile that it may be okay for her to just have this downtime.
Hopefully DS ups his hours at work. He’s in a warehouse and they cut the part-timers hours way back when the stay at home orders went into place. Right now he’s working 2 nights a week for just 2-3 hours each. Ideally he’d be working at least 20-30/week not just for the money, but to get him off the computer and out of the house.
He was supposed to be making a big scout trip end of July for a 100 mile hike in the mountains that they would have been training for starting last month through most of the summer, but of course now that is all up in the air and the camp as of now has cancelled all treks starting before July 1st. I’m not real confident it will happen, and even if it does, they are going to have a real hard time prepping in a short time frame. Right now all scouting activities in our district are cancelled so they aren’t even allowed to hike as a crew together.
So, it’s beginning to look like a pretty dull summer of social distancing.
@cshell2 Yes, it would be nice for her to find something, even if it’s 10-20 hours a week to make some spending money that she can have during the school year and to get out of the house for a bit. Otherwise, once these AP exams are done, it looks like the summer will consist of sleeping until noon, TikTok, Netflix, and Xbox Live at night. 
The upside is I like having her around because I know in the fall she will be gone (if her school allows students on campus by that point). We have been getting out of the house each night to take walks around the block.
About the AP tests - CB dropped the ball big time. DS20 had no issues but many of his friends had issues even after taking the demo test. And CB’s plan to stop cheating is juvenile at best (opening a reddit sub with intention of attracting future cheaters).
Surprised that there is not much of a blowback to CB…they should have made the technology better (providing the students a better service or allow them to redo the test same day). Of course it’s a completely new scenario but instead of resorting to juvenile gimmicks they should have invested time in improving the technology.
We cease all broadband access to anyone in the house except for S20 during AP tests. So far 2 down and no issues. One of his friends had issues submitting and in her panic to head up the stairs she fell and broke her laptop. What bad luck!!
My D was able to submit one answer out of 2 for both the Physics and the BC exams. She is beyond frustrated. She requested retakes for both, so I sure hope they are granted!
2 more next week – I’ll have her make sure her browser is up to date - thanks for the tip.
Was on the phone 2 hours with College Board supervisor today. They said if the mistake was on your end, they will not grant a retake. The did say there have been a lot of issues.
Part of the problem is that if you ask for a retake, which you must do within 48 hours (and if it is granted), then previous scores are automatically cancelled. But if you ask for “escalation” which is another way of saying “hey, I think I did everything right, can you look into this for me” – well that takes 5-7 days to address. So you either have to ask for a retake and hope that whatever happened doesn’t again, OR you have to open a case and have it looked into without any guarantee of it being resolved.
As we are not trying to get college credit, and given the test was taken under ideal conditions (high speed internet, most recent browser, chrome browser, competent and tech savvy test taker who watched demo and followed instructions etc.), we opened a case.
I did advocate stridently for others in less fortunate situations (needing credit or test taken under less ideal circumstances) and said they would need to address the retake or investigation time windows or policies due to the glaring conflict.