Cardozo High School, like many schools state and nationwide, has been opting for digital testing rather than paper-testing. As of 2025, 16 out of 28 Advanced Placement (AP) exams from College Board will be administered to students fully digital, while the other 12 will be hybrid — partially digital and partially written. With this progression, there are certainly some complications that cause more harm than good to all students.
The first thing to consider with digital exams is which exams will be digital and which will be hybrid; does it make sense? All English and history AP exams, like AP World History: Modern, AP Language/Literature and Composition, and AP U.S. History are completely digital as of 2025, and will be taken through the software Bluebook — with the addition of a few science APs like AP Environmental Science and AP Psychology.
The history and English part of exams definitely makes sense to be digital. Many students won’t have to include hand-writing stamina preparations as part of their test-prep in order to pass their AP exams. At the same time, there are a few science APs mentioned that are all digital which can cause some complications.
Mixing math and computers? This might not be the ideal test taking experience for many students. Exams like AP Environmental Science certainly have some multiple choice questions that require students to manually solve them. With computers, the progress that digital technology shows may just backfire, and may raise stress in students than relieve stress.
The 12 hybrid exams are more science and math-oriented, with major exams like AP Calculus AB/BC, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, all AP Physics courses, AP Macroeconomics, and AP Microeconomics. Although there are still more tests to add to this list, having exams that already have little writing involved seems a bit pretentious of us to just have them administered digitally because we can. If there’s no need, what’s the point?
The fact that these exams already have to have a portion written in pen goes to show how the College Board may be fighting to have AP exams taken digitally for the sake of having them digitally. It could also be because they want to prove that they’re continuing to develop, by removing the essay portion, and making questions shorter, yet maintaining the same difficulty level.
The SAT exam has been taken digitally by students in U.S. territories since March of 2023. One year ago in March, 2024, students could take the exam internationally, inside or outside of U.S. borders.
Two years ago, Khan Academy had already created their digital SAT practice course, advising students to not only utilize Bluebook’s practice tests but also to, “Explore both the digital SAT Math course and the digital SAT Reading and Writing course on Khan Academy.”
In comparison to the paper and pencil version of the SAT, the digital version remains on a scale of 400 to 1600, yet there is no essay, the exam has shorter reading passages, it is now two hours and 14 minutes instead of the minimum three hours, and the digital version takes data from the first module to create questions with a higher or lower difficulty level based on how the student performed.
From a student’s perspective, this may be a huge win. This new test however, could seem too easy for students and lead to further grade inflation if many students achieve high scores with less work. Many students definitely deserve the high score they achieve that is rewarded by their hard work and persistence, but by many it could be deemed too easy, as students require less reading, and timing stamina, their hand won’t cramp from writing.
Digital testing is certainly on the rise and can be shown as very helpful to students, but with grade inflation providing free 4.0 GPAs the digital SAT has the potential to further this issue, and digital testing is simply not necessary in certain exam subjects where students prefer solving questions with a paper and pencil in hand.
