By Megan Tran

Staff Writer

Especially during this time of year high students are signing up for Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT), Advanced Placement (AP) tests, and SAT subject tests.  With the amount of revenue collected for these exams comes the question whether or not the College Board should still be considered a non profit organization and reap the benefits that come along with it. The College Board should give a clear statement to where their money is really going and how it is specifically helping its students.

According to the National Council of Nonprofits, nonprofits are groups that are tax exempt and are public charities because they are formed to provide a public benefit.

The College Board gave a statement to CNN that states, “The College Board is a not-for profit membership organization governed by 30 trustees[…] We do not generate profits or ‘make money.’ All revenues from our products, services or grants are re-invested into improved or additional services that support our mission.”

However College Board salaries show otherwise. Their former President, Gaston Carterton, earned a salary of $1.3 million according to Elena Weissmann, Patch Poster journalist. Their new President, David Coleman, earns a starting salary of $550,000 with a $750,000 compensation and their trusts that make an average of $355,000 per year. It is unusual that the people behind College Board are being paid such huge sums if they are running a nonprofit company.

On their website, there is no stated place where they state where all the money goes to.

Additionally, the College Board has ridiculously high testing costs. This year, the SAT costs $46 to $60 dollars, AP tests are $94 each, and SAT subject tests are $26 per test. Besides the upfront fees, they also charge for phone registration, to change the date of testing or test center, for late registration, to be on the waitlist, for rush order, for archived scores order, for a score report request, for scores over the phone, for multiple choice score verification, for SAT student answer service, for the SAT Question-and-Answer Service, for essay score verification and to send your SAT scores.

Students are also buying expensive prep books and taking SAT prep classes. All the money that students pay to get good scores eventually goes back to the College Board, since most prep books are made or sponsored by them. Their prep books range from College Planning books to SAT prep books.

“Standardized tests are extremely expensive to create, administer and score. For example, exam fees fund test development, which is a multi-year, complex process,” Carterton stated to the New York Times, “Exam fees also cover the cost of shipping millions of boxes of exam materials to and from schools and scoring the exams. Fees also fund initiative to promote equal access to out tests, such as fee waivers.”

Nevertheless, the College Board should not be considered a nonprofit because the money that they receive is going to places that is not benefiting their students and instead making more money for their administrators.With their outrageous overpriced fees and high salaries the College Board still continues to finesse money out of many Americans.