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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Testimonial
This was my first time administering AP and IB exams. TR was user-friendly and the instructions were very clear. The customer support was also immediate. Creating seating charts and pulling rosters for individual exams was a great feature. Collecting registration fees, managing exam changes and balances was super easy. I am looking forward to using more features for the next academic year. I would recommend TR to all coordinators.
This was my second year as the AP Coordinator and I love Total Registration! I would not have made it through my first year without using TR, and I found I needed it just as much this year. Everything works—the student registration is so easy, Total Registration collects all the money and our business office loves that part! All of the reports are very helpful, including room rosters and seating charts to print. TR also sends reminders about due dates, like when to order the tests! Everything to keep me on track. The service also emails and texts the students and parents their exam schedules as a reminder. Customer service is excellent, I always hear back within an hour or so to get answers to my questions, and they are always trying to make things easier for us. I will only run my AP exams with Total Registration!
TR has made my life as AP Coord so much better!!!! Thank you for everything your team does to make this a wonderful experience!
I am impressed with your updates based on customer feedback. I am also impressed and grateful for your generous support. No matter how experienced I am with TR, I still run into snags sometimes, and you reply to requests for help quickly and effectively. THANK YOU.
We have used Total Registration for two years now and it has been an outstanding experience. We have a large AP program and Total Registration has saved me hours since I no longer have to enter all of the test registration information on spreadsheets. They have reports for things that you don't even realize you need, but have been very useful. If I have any problems, questions or suggestions, they are very quick to help and respond. They are very knowledge about the AP program and very customer focused.
I can't ever imagine having our AP registration without Total Registration.