If you just sat the GCSE...

[Ange]

Yes, but the College Board has a vested interest in making sure students can't cheat. Students who test out don't have to pay the colleges that class' tuition and fees, and the colleges that make up the board don't make as much money. I'm sure that's partly why they don't take any inconsistency.

I could've sworn I had to pay a fee for all the APs I took, but I guess it was the testing fee. I know I had to pay fees for the college courses (Calc, Advanced Bio) I took in HS.

[Siniri]

AP tests just get a student out of one college course.

Yes, but the College Board has a vested interest in making sure students can't cheat. Students who test out don't have to pay the colleges that class' tuition and fees, and the colleges that make up the board don't make as much money. I'm sure that's partly why they don't take any inconsistency.

Most colleges charge a flat-rate tuition (regardless of the number of credit hours), so this argument doesn't hold a whole lot of water. Students who only take a few AP classes usually won't be able to graduate early, so they'll still pay the same. Students who take a lot of AP classes are usually bright (and thus don't really need to cheat) overachievers who often double-major in college or take additional higher level classes, so they don't tend to graduate early, either. [I speak from experience here -- I started college with 39 AP credits, but between my double biochemistry and biology majors, I actually couldn't have graduated early due to scheduling, but I didn't really want to, anyway.] In addition, students who do cheat on an AP test could fail the higher level classes based on the AP classes (e.g., Calculus 3 or organic chemistry), having to re-take those courses and requiring summer school or extra semesters of enrollment (i.e., more money for the colleges, not less).

If colleges didn't gain anything from AP classes, why would they have instituted AP testing to begin with? You could actually argue that AP classes free up space in the large intro courses (such as intro bio for all the pre-meds), helping reduce the average student:faculty ratio for classes (which affect rankings).

More on topic, my school had a pepper spray bomb go off during the oral part of our French AP exam -- a few people had completed that section, but some of us hadn't started it yet, and the administrators were dealing with the emergency and left us "unsupervised" for about 30 minutes. We were nervous about our scores being invalidated or having to retest, but it was fine. The SAT also had some errors when I took it once -- they just threw out the 2 questions affected and determined our score from the rest. So if it really was just a couple of questions, I think it's reasonable not to make everyone retest; it should be easy to factor out the affected questions. *shrugs*

[Pudding]

My testing room's SAT scores were thrown out because someone brought their kid in and out of the room several times during the writing portion--which probably would've adversely affected the scores if it affected them. I think most of the time schools will cancel scores if they're affected badly, but not if they're affected positively. They've got incentives to keep scores high.

AP tests just get a student out of one college course.

Yes, but the College Board has a vested interest in making sure students can't cheat. Students who test out don't have to pay the colleges that class' tuition and fees, and the colleges that make up the board don't make as much money. I'm sure that's partly why they don't take any inconsistency.

In addition, students who do cheat on an AP test could fail the higher level classes based on the AP classes (e.g., Calculus 3 or organic chemistry), having to re-take those courses and requiring summer school or extra semesters of enrollment (i.e., more money for the colleges, not less).

True, but I know several students who managed to use their AP credits for almost all their core distributional requirements in college. Assuming they tested out of calculus, they'd never be required to take another math course at my school. (Ah, liberal arts schools!) If they'd cheated on that, then they managed to avoid a course that might've been hard for them, and might've brought down their GPA--and it could very easily help them graduate early.

You'd be surprised at how many non-scientists and non-double majors actually graduate early. I've actually figured out how to graduate early with my double major--admittedly, I came in with a lot of credits in one of my fields.

Though, you're right that most people don't. The average student at an American university graduates after at least 5 years.