Again, I already have a bachelor’s degree from a university, so having to deal with stuff like this is just a bit more irksome than it might otherwise be.  This is again about AP test scores (I’ll limit everything else).

I have my scores that were mailed to me, not good enough.  Ok, I suppose it’s possible that I fudged them, so official are needed.  A degree that required the classes that they’d override still doesn’t suffice, so my degree appears to be worthless here as well.

While going through old paperwork looking for scores and info, inspiration struck:  I have a still sealed copy of my high school transcripts, on which are printed my AP test scores.  Surely this is official enough, as I haven’t been able to tamper with them, and they come from a learning institution.  Unfortunately no, they are also not high enough on the scale of official (which were I not lazy right now, I’d draw a detailed diagram of).

As a recap of what I must do to satisfy some basic classes, I must print a paper application to retrieve my scores.  This is because they are older than four years, so I cannot do it online.  I print a paper, write on it, then fax it to them, where another piece of paper is printed with my fax.  Someone is then paid to go through paper files (as old scores are printed on to more paper and culled from their database, since the computer, after all, is extremely limited in storage.)  That person goes to a physical location of storage that is full of paper, finds my paper, and makes a copy (as I imagine that they wouldn’t send along the original).  They then put it into more paper and send it along, thereby increasing waste, as well as energy required in shipment and handling of it.

This is an amazing scam that AP can run, as it is a system that people buy into out of seeming necessity, as most nonsensical ones are.  No one can (wants to, really) go above and say “this makes little sense, let’s do something more logical and less time consuming”, instead perpetuating a wasteful and greedy system.  How do I know that it’s greedy?  Besides paying more for the older copies than newer, since they have to pay someone to do the physical task of getting it, rather than a cheaper and faster computerized system, they also charge that same amount for each copy of each test.  Similar to how passport photos cost $10 to have printed for you at Walgreens, or 29 cents from the same exact printer by taking your own picture and hitting the buttons yourself, it is an unnecessary waste that has been ingrained into a system.

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