More than 3 million students are expected to take the digital exams from May 5-16 on an application called Bluebook, which is the same platform College Board uses to administer the SAT, the news release said.
Trevor Packer, head of the AP program at College Board, wrote in a July 2024 announcement that there has been a “rise in bad actors compromising AP Exam content for financial gain,” which prompted the nonprofit to speed its shift from paper to platform. He said the move will help prevent theft and cheating, as “digital exams are much more secure than shipping paper exams in boxes to thousands of locations weeks in advance.”
Packer added that the new format will increase accessibility and improve the overall test experience as well. More than 75 percent of students and administrators who took and conducted digital AP Exams in 2024 rated them better than or the same as paper testing, per last week’s news release.
“We’ve found that almost all students who’ve taken a digital AP Exam or participated in an AP digital testing pilot have adapted quickly to the new format,” Packer said in a public statement. “Students today are ‘digital natives’ and appreciate the user-friendly features of the Bluebook interface.”
Of the 28 AP exams that will be administered digitally next month, 12 will be hybrid exams, wherein students will use a paper booklet to answer any “free-response questions,” according to the July announcement, which adds that College Board will provide schools with devices and Wi-Fi support if needed.
Standard paper exams will continue for eight AP subjects — Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Spanish literature and music theory — but will transition to digital testing in the future, the announcement said.
