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The College Board is a non-profit Examination Board in the United States that was formed in the 1920s by James Connan (a former president of Harvard University) as the '''College Entrance Examination Board''' ('''CEEB'''). Its membership includes over 4,500 institutions of higher learning. It is known principally for managing Standardized Test s such as the SAT , PSAT , CLEP and the subject-specific SAT Subject Tests and Advanced Placement tests. The SAT, the most well known of these, is a test widely used for admission to Universities in the United States , which over 3 million prospective college students take yearly. All of the tests are actually administered by the Educational Testing Service , which is the world's largest private educational measurement organization; ETS also administers other tests like the GRE and TOEFL , independent of the College Board. The College Board's headquarters are in New York City , but the organization maintains 13 other offices across the country and in Puerto Rico . Among the functions of these satellite offices are the development and execution of professional development programs for teachers and school counselors, as well as research into and product development in the area of Financial Aid . TESTS SAT The SAT , which is no longer an acronym, is the most widely known of the College Board's examinations. Over 3 million students, both in the United States and elsewhere, take the test each year. The SAT has undergone many changes in its history; most recently it was changed to include a Writing section. In addition to the SAT, the College Board offers the PSAT , a nearly identical test which functions as a preliminary SAT and a selection tool for the National Merit Scholarship Program . The present SAT (sometimes referred to as the New SAT) consists of three sections: Mathematics , Critical Reading , and Writing , each graded on a 200 to 800 point scale. It functions mainly as a college entrance examination for U.S. Colleges . It is sometimes accused of being an elitist test; however, there seems to be little likelihood of it disappearing in the near future. Almost all colleges require prospective students to take either the SAT or the competing ACT , both of which are ingrained in the educational system. The College Board maintains that the test is fair, accurate, and unbiased. It produces many versions of the test each year and maintains a large staff to develop the tests. The College Board also offers SAT Subject Tests (formerly SAT IIs), which some more selective colleges require students to take. They are graded on the same scale and are one hour in length. Advanced Placement (AP) The College Board supervises the Advanced Placement Program . Students can choose to be placed in Advanced Placement (AP) courses during their High School career. At the end of the course, they have the option to take an Advanced Placement examination (AP test). Because AP courses are supposed to be equivalent to college-level, many College s in the United States will treat them as having taken an equivalent college-level credit class depending on their score. AP tests are scored on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest. Different colleges have differing requirements for score levels and test areas that they will accept. Some colleges will accept a 3 or above on an AP test as college credit, others accept only a score of 4 or 5. The College Board currently offers examinations in 35 subjects. Criticism The College Board has also received critisims about the grading of the tests. In October 2005, the SAT Reasoning test was misgraded for 4,000 students. Additionally, a large number of tests were simply not graded. The College Board received great criticism from both member colleges, students, and the press. Though the College Board claimed that the events were isolated, it claims to have revamped its grading procedures and hired an outside firm to audit their practices. Many in the media have suspected that these were not isolated incidents, though, because the situation only came out after students requested regrading (which costs an additional $35, which many students may previously not have wanted to pay). A lawsuit has been filed by a student who received an incorrect score on the SAT. {Link without Title} The lawsuit is currently seeing class action status. In addition to this, The College Board does not have a toll free phone number to change test dates, test centers (which cannot be done online), etc. However the College Board has a phone number with a New Jersey area code for this objective (However you would probably be put on hold for over 15 minutes). A lot of student also complain that their emails go unanswered. The College Board is also criticized for having a basic monopoly over the lives of students, as anyone who wants to attend college has to take the SAT. As a result, students are often angered as the College Board raises its prices nearly every year. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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