This year the College Board has changed the regular due dates for confirming the Advanced Placement (AP) test and paying for the exam. This year, students had to be signed up on College Board, say yes to the exam, and pay for the exam by November 15. Fossil Ridge High School is trying to help students by making the deadline November 1 so they could help kids finalize anything they may have missed or forgotten. 

Last year the deadline was between January 1 to March 1, and that was only paying the fee, they never had students agree to the test. The time to pay for the exam was between the first three months of the second semester, which changed this year throwing a lot of kids, parents, and teachers into a world of confusion. Many of these people did not know where to pay, when to say yes or no, or when anything was due. 

A lot of students were stressed because they only had three months to get into the class and figure out if they wanted to be enrolled in the class so they can learn and prepare for the final exam. Currently there are 675 students taking an AP exam and there are still students that are registering for second semester so the changes affected a lot of students. With the jump up on dates, parents were kind of angry because they were not informed that there is a third party website called Total Registration which is where you are supposed to pay but also they were unsure of when to pay. 

Even with these difficulties, Fossil did very well by making the due date November 1 allowing the fourteen days to help any of these parents and students to finalize everything. The two big helps were Deb Alexander, the Office Manager at Fossil, and Dona Reynolds, who took over as the new AP Coordinator. They were the two who provided all the information needed on the AP courses. 

Alexander and Reynolds gave information on what kids should be on the lookout for, so that these mistakes do not happen again in the future. Make sure to know that the exam is 94 dollars and there are a lot of fees added on if you withdraw from the exam or pay late. Something that helps the AP classes is to sign up for the class because College Board offers 36 classes but Fossil gives about 23 to 26 so if you sign up for the class the more likely the class will be held at Fossil. Resources are a big thing with the changes so make sure to check your email, booklets that your teachers can provide you with, look on the Fossil page under academics under AP, and on College Board.

Something else that can help that is not on students’ laptops is listening to announcements, checking the tvs in the hallway, and if any help is needed never be afraid to ask the teachers. And finally the biggest thing for students in the AP course is that when on the college board account, and a student knows they will be taking the test, sign into total registration to pay the fee. When doing this it links the exam to the student which is a powerful tool for the coordinator to pull info for many different things but make sure to fill in the student’s information into total registration and make sure it is the right class so there is not any confusion.