$704 ­– that’s how much money the average student who takes eight Advanced Placement exams over the course of their high school career will end up forking over, according to the College Board’s website. Of course, this figure doesn’t include the multiple times a student takes the SAT, SAT II Subject Tests, the PSAT and the ACT. With all of this figured in, it evens out to be around $1,100 per student (collegeboard.com).

While the students have to deal with the pressure to take a massive amount of AP tests, as well as score highly on the SAT and SATII Subject Tests, their parents are the ones feeling the burden of the costs. Each AP exam is $88, and one attempt at the SAT is $49 (collegeboard.com).

   Public education is required to be free, according to California laws. Despite this claim, students are practically forced to take AP and SAT exams to get into selective colleges. 26.3 percent of Californian students take 1-4 AP classes in the duration of high school, and 11.8 percent take 5-8. Although these students are allowed to forgo taking the exam, by doing so they will not receive any college credit, and the class has less of a substantial effect on a college application (cshe.berkeley.com). Colleges are searching for those outstanding students who score well on every one of their tests, but many students aren’t taking them due to the significant costs. If universities want to make college admission a fair process, they should lower the cost of the SAT and AP exams.

Though the College Board does recognize low-income families and grants them a pay cut, in most of the country it brings the cost from $87 to $57: still a considerable amount of money. As a result, less than 1 percent of low-income students nation-wide take the exam (ets.org). Additionally, students stuck in “limbo” between low-income and high to average-income families don’t get the pay cut they deserve and can’t always afford to take AP tests. One third of students enrolled in AP classes don’t take the exam (chse.berkeley.com), generally because of their outstanding costs.

Driven students are eager to apply and get accepted into top-notch universities and Ivy League schools, whose average accepted GPA is above a 4.0. This requires students to take AP classes. Senior Sarah McConnell will have taken 10 AP exams by the time she graduates this June, which comes to $880 simply to take the tests. “It’s wrong that students should have to pay for the tests. It’s important for college credit, and colleges expect you to take the test, so it’s unfair to students,” said McConnell. If colleges want students to have the exposure to AP classes and exams, the costs should be substantially less.

Standardized tests have become necessary for admission to college. Students are forced to take exams whose scores are huge deciding factors in whether or not they get accepted. Universities assume each student has the money to pay for every single AP class they take and the multiple times they want to take the SAT, which isn’t realistic. To give every individual an equal chance to take the tests they are qualified to pass, required payment must be reduced significantly.