Well into the night, a junior sits in her bed, the glow of her computer screen lighting up the room. Logging into the College Board to access her assignments on AP Classroom, she sighs. She’s tired of her life revolving around a single organization. All it seems to do is create more work for her. 

The College Board is one of the largest standardized-test developers in the United States, administering SAT and AP exams. Although the College Board is registered as a nonprofit with the IRS, top executives earn millions of dollars every year. And in 2022 alone, the College Board earned $1.6 billion in revenue.

These profits have raised questions surrounding equity for people like junior Zoe Jovanovic. For each college a student applies to, they have to pay$12 per exam to send scores. And in 2024, registration to take most AP exams cost $99  except for AP Seminar and AP research, which cost $147 each. Students who demonstrate significant financial need can request a reduction to $37 per exam, but it still costs them $12 per college per test to send scores. 

Junior Zoe Jovanovic said that the high costs of exams perpetuates existing inequalities in the system. 

“I think it’s really unfair, especially for people that can’t afford and do want to take a bunch of those tests,” Jovanovic said. “You’re expected to pay so much. I think the bar (for the cost of tests) should just be lower because a test costs so much.” 

Students who perform best on these standardized assessments tend to have a higher family income while kids with fewer resources may find barriers in succeeding in these classes. And a recent study found that students from families in the top 1% of the income distribution are 13 times more likely than students from the bottom 20% to score 1300 or higher on the SAT.

College and Career Center College Advisor Sandra Cernobori said, originally, the SAT was implemented to promote equity.

“It’s ironic that the very tests that reflect so much of an unfair bias towards richer kids was originally given as a way to allow for more equity in the system by standardizing it,” Cernobori said.

Given the high price of exams, a junior who requested to remain anonymous because she said she didn’t want the College Board to be able to identify her said variations in academic rigor across schools often hinders efforts at standardization. At some schools, about 60% of AP exams taken by low-income students this year did not earn scores high enough to pass, while 95% of Paly students taking an AP passed at least one exam. 

“Even though (AP exams are) supposed to be standardized, Paly itself makes the classes hard,” the junior said. “What I’ve heard from my cousin is that, at her school, it’s more common to get a 3 or not pass than to get a 5. It seems like most teachers at Paly have a really high 5 rate just because our classwork is so much harder than the actual test.” 

The junior said because the College Board holds a monopoly over the college entrance-exam system, it is unfairly taking money away from students. 

“They own everything,” the junior said. “There’s no way, besides AP classes, to take advanced classes, except for the IB system. They’re supposedly a nonprofit, but they seem to be generating a lot of profit, and I don’t think they’re actually giving back to the students the way they say they do.”

But Cernobori said the College Board has gotten better at helping low-income students obtain fee waivers. 

“I think equity is really complicated on many levels,” Cernobori said. “I would say, in recent years, they’ve made it easier for students to request fee waivers, which was very challenging in the past for anyone to receive.”

Still, Cernobori said the most selective colleges use a holistic approach and colleges will consider the financial barriers in admission decisions.

The junior said for her, the fundamental issue with the College Board is that it takes advantage of students who feel pressured to participate in its system. 

“Let’s say you want to take the SAT — people take it two, three times to try to improve their score,” the junior said. “If you can’t pay for that, you have one chance. You have to devote a day. If you can’t drive, you have to pay for gas too, or your parents have to pay you and not work. Even changing locations cost money. They’re really milking you, they’re trying to drain students, and it’s really, really sad, because people are limited because of money.”

The College Board did not respond to an interview request for this story.