News You Might Have Missed: 6/20/25
A collection of news and updates relating to admissions and testing over the last week.
AP Scores are Out (As a Group on Social Media)
Advanced Placement Exam scores are out! Kind of. Specifically, the score distributions are available for certain tests from the May 2025 Exams. Even more specifically, they are available on the social media accounts of Trevor Packer. Packer is the Head of the Advanced Placement Program for the College Board.
This is how the College Board (and Packer) have been initially revealing the scores. The AP Exams’ five-point range of scores means that the full tests need to be fully graded and evaluated before scores can be handed out. These results come out only after each exam has been graded. Since each exam has a free-response portion, that is not instantaneous. Then everything has to be evaluated.
This isn’t much for students waiting on their own personal AP scores, but it is something. The distributions don’t change that much year to year. There are still small shifts which are fun to track if you’re into that sort of thing. Students will receive their exam scores on July 7, along with more detailed reports for schools.
The State Department Will Be Reviewing International Students' Social Media
In the Trump Administration’s ongoing crackdown on International students, the State Department announced it will review prospective international students at American colleges’ social media accounts. Ostensibly, this is done to make sure no one entering the US on a Student Visa is a security threat.
This policy gets complicated in many ways. To begin with, this is a brand-new policy. There is no actual process to screening presumably hundreds of thousands of students’ social media accounts, just a stated intention to do so. Also, any social media account will need to be set to “Public” to be evaluated. Most importantly, what exactly constitutes a “security threat” on social media has not been defined.
This is one more action by the current administration which is likely to diminish the number of international students on college campuses. International students make up a sizable percentage at many schools, creating additional pressure for many schools to make classes and budgets.
Colleges Can Now Share Revenue with Athletes and It's Complicated
College athletes have been able to make money for years now, based on Name, Image, and Likeness rights. Essentially, college athletes could endorse products, sell merchandise with their name and picture, or any other creative way to make money as long as the school wasn’t involved. A judicial ruling has changed all of that, and now athletes can participate in revenue sharing with their institutions.
That makes paying athletes a lot more complicated. The first challenge is determining what “revenue sharing” really is, and the second is determining exactly where the money comes from in a school’s budget. The Chronicle of Higher Education dove into many of the issues facing colleges.
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