Survey Results: AP Coordinator Compensation, Support, and Opinions
This spring, we surveyed AP coordinators to understand their feelings regarding being an AP Coordinator. Over 450 AP coordinators (over 95% are current AP Coordinators that do not use Total Registration's service) provided their feedback through this survey.
Respondents
Coordinators responding to the survey either were most likely to have 5 or more of years experience (33%) or they were 1st-year coordinators (29%), and they expect to fulfill the coordinator duties again next year (89%).
On average, coordinators administer 606 exams and are at schools requiring students to pay at least some portion of AP exam fees (65%) and give the students a choice to sit for exams (58%)
Coordinator Experience
Coordinators described their experience in their own words and indicated their agreement with a series of descriptors. Regardless of years as coordinator, compensation or support, respondents stated that their role was time-consuming and challenging, as shown in the responses below:
Responses to: Q7 - When reflecting on your experience as AP Coordinator, what 5 words come to mind?
Five words in greater frequency than all other words. Next to the word is the number of occurrences and the percentage of respondents that mentioned the word.
- Time-Consuming - 137 (35%)
- Stressful - 94 (24%)
- Overwhelming - 59 (15%)
- Organization- 58 (15%)
- Frustrating - 39 (10%)
Responses to: Q8 - Please indicate your agreement with the following statements. I find the role of AP Coordinator to be...
| Strongly Agree |
Somewhat Agree |
Neither Agree or Disagree |
Somewhat Disagree |
Strongly Disagree |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rewarding | 13.73% | 32.12% | 28.50% | 12.18% | 13.47% |
| Stressful | 55.32% | 34.55% | 5.97% | 2.60% | 1.56% |
| Enjoyable | 7.87% | 25.46% | 28.87% | 20.73% | 17.06% |
| Time Consuming |
69.09% | 24.68% | 5.19% | 0.52% | 0.52% |
| Important | 60.62% | 26.94% | 9.59% | 1.55% | 1.30% |
| Frustrating | 28.39% | 38.28% | 17.71% | 10.42% | 5.21% |
| Satisfying | 13.02% | 30.21% | 30.21% | 13.80% | 12.76% |
| Overwhelming | 36.10% | 37.40% | 16.36% | 8.31% | 1.82% |
Five words that resonated strongly with AP Coordinators, having a high level of agreement (strongly or somewhat agree).
- Time Consuming (94%)
- Stressful (89%)
- Important (87%)
- Overwhelming (73%)
- Frustrating (67%)
Coordinator Compensation
While the coordinator's responsibilities are reported to be extensive, only a small proportion of coordinators are directly compensated financially (<25%). Surprisingly, respondents that were compensated did not significantly differ from those who were not in their experience as a coordinator.
Coordinator Challenges
Responses to: Q9 - Which AP Coordinator duties do you find most challenging?
Here's a list of some of the most commonly mentioned challenges. Total Registration assists schools with the issues in bold:
- Finding proctors
- Proctor/Room assignments
- Payment collection and financial tracking
- Difficulty navigating MyAP/College Board's website
- Communicating with teachers, students, and families, including disseminating join codes to students along with instructions for joining MyAP Classroom
- Technical difficulties/issues, especially with world languages
- Verifying students pay for exams they plan to take
- Exam-day organization, including accommodations for SSD students
- Identifying exam conflicts and rescheduling exams to an alternate date
- Shipping exam materials back to College Board
Coordinator Support
The most likely support for coordinators was reported as extra staff support (57%) and accounting/bookkeeping (37%). Coordinators reported using other IT tools to complete their duties, including spreadsheets, like Google Sheets (69%) and Excel (50%) as well school information systems (43%) and school IT support (34%).
Summary
It is clear from the survey results that the essential duties of being an AP Coordinator are time-consuming, stressful, and overwhelming. Most AP coordinators' responsibilities are above and beyond what they were hired to do (they have "real jobs"). While coordinators are unlikely to receive financial compensation for their role, many engage additional staff and technological support to assist with their duties.
AP Coordinators do not need to struggle through this alone. Over 1000 schools trust Total Registration to provide integrated tools that greatly simplify the processes.
- Sign up for a Guided Demo to learn first-hand how Total Registration simplifies the processes and saves staff time.
- Receiving help does not need to break the bank. Submit a Pricing Request to see how affordable our assistance can be.
- Discover why AP Coordinators rely on Total Registration by reading client testimonials.
Please email any questions or comments regarding the survey to Support@TotalRegistration.net.
You can access a pdf of the full survey results here
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As a first year high school testing coordinator, at a fairly large school, I knew nothing about AP. A fellow coordinator had used Total Registration and encouraged me to do the same. I loved the ease of it and the reports I could run to help me with ordering, with free/reduced lunch waivers, counts, and communication with those registered. The kids could register at their convenience and parents could pay online. I hate to think of the record keeping I would have to do had I not used TR. It was a life saver.
I really appreciate all of your support. This new change to College Board registration has been a nightmare for me, but I always know you are there to help and your help is greatly appreciated!
I can't tell you how happy we have been with your product. Initially I was not interested in online registration for AP but your product made it do easy! We can't wait for the new pre-printing of the student info feature!
THANK YOU TO THE AMAZING TR TEAM. It was a crazy run to the finish line and November 15th. There is absolutely NO WAY I could have pulled it off without Total Registration. You are always one step ahead of what we (AP Coordinators) need. The final CB to TR reconciliation step is so synchronized that I was able to hit SUBMIT hours before the CB deadline.
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I am in my third year with TR, and I am still discovering new ways to make my job easier through the system. The support staff is constantly helpful and patient. I cannot believe the ease with which I am able to organize this AP project. You never asked about registration before TR and the hours we spent having students register with paper registrations and collecting money and recording the registrations, counting and recounting before ordering. Cancellations involved writing up a refund from the business office, and alternate tests involved collecting more money. It is almost painful to remember those awful days 4 years ago.