The AP Art History exam is not new. AP exams were already available in dozens of subjects when I was in high school, 25 years ago. I took that AP Art History ex

The AP Art History exam is not new. AP exams were already available in dozens of subjects when I was in high school, 25 years ago. I took that AP Art History exam (although my first-choice school obviously didn't accept any AP credits except a few of the sciences and math). For a student from a poor family, the cost of AP tests is a hurdle. My high school offered enough variety of AP-level classes that every class I took during senior year was an AP class. Combined, the cost of those exams was several hundred late-90s dollars. To accept the credits, colleges want to see AP exam scores, not whatever exam your teacher ginned up at the end of the year. My parents were getting by a couple hundred dollars of food stamps a month and something like $100 in TANF at the time. Remember TANF? We had to cut some kind of informal installment plan deal with the public school administration, and I'm pretty sure our college placement counselor took money out of her own pocket to make this work. Cost waivers are said to be available, but the process to get them reviewed was fickle and time-consuming. I was apparently one of a very few students in my class in that position. No one in the administration knew how to process them. And the ordeal was obviously humiliating. I can easily believe that the process is a deterrent for many prospective test takers. Also, remember when public high schools had college placement counselors who actually got to know students personally? Those were the days! The Common Application is a godsend. I didn't apply to nearly as many schools as my classmates because my family literally couldn't afford the $50-$70 per application, not to mention the fees to share test scores and so on. Again, waivers were hypothetically available, but the process to submit them was also whimsical and humiliating.