director

software engineer

senior software engineer

senior director

executive director

College Board

The College Board's leadership are a bunch of very high powered executives who seem to have no idea what their lowlier labourers are up to. It's the kind of place where someone from the C-Suite might come down to "take a tour" of the work regular folks are doing, without much knowledge of how the company actually functions or serves students. Every time I have interacted with leadership at The College Board, I have been shocked at how little they know about the actual evaluations they are creating for students and how these evaluations are scored. Teachers often complain about the disconnect between the exams mounted by The College Board and the guidance received to teach to the tests. For example, they have changed the dates of "World History" to serve a Eurocentric colonialist worldview many times , no matter how many people have protested its antiquated approach. Parents, educators, school administrators, students and many others have advocated for a more modern understanding of history without such a narrow focus. The College Board has gestured towards these changes but has never made them. For a long time I did not understand the close mindedness of these folks, but then, I met the members of the C-Suite who have no idea what subjects constitute World History despite being responsible for overseeing World History. This company is out of touch and I am not certain it has proven itself useful as a standardised testing organisation. The College Board needs new blood, new ideas and creative new approaches to remain relevant. As it stands, I can't see how this place is still even in existence sometimes.

The College Board is an organization that cares deeply about the educational experience of students. This organization is concerned with improving academic rigor around the country and tries to be innovative in its approach to developing educational tools. A typical day consists of multiple meetings with executive level colleagues; we engage in planning different stages of a new program or product. I've learned a lot about the importance of communication and planning, structuring processes so that others can follow work plans effectively, and the importance and power of being proactive and taking initiatives.  I've enjoyed meeting academics from different disciplines and working closely with them to develop academic tools and programs.  I've also enjoyed meeting heads of educational organizations with whom we work collaboratively on developing various educational services. I'm proud of having put together a team of very talented and creative colleagues and working alongside them to develop new programs in the arts and in the global learning fields.

The hardest part of the job is to develop new programs quickly and effectively, especially new programs have multiple internal and external dependencies. The most enjoyable part of the job is to work with talented and creative colleagues who care about the students and the teachers we serve. I also enjoy being innovative in my work and constantly learning new information and new skills.

Poor management but not toxic yet. There is no visibility. Management doesn’t listen to employees suggestions. No opportunities to grow, extremely for senior people. People can be a senior engineer forever and never get promoted. Whenever there is a higher level position opened, they will hire outside people instead of promoting internal people. 
College Board is like government. You just do what management asked. They make all decisions by themselves, whether you like it or not. The funny thing is that they think they made all the perfect changes. My team has a very high turnover rate. 8 people resigned and 2 just got laid off last week. People who are currently there are finding their way to leave too.
The whole organization is sort of communism. Management thinks they are awesome and do whatever they want. It is dictatorship. During our recent all employee meeting, they spent whole afternoon to talk about our CEO and how awesome he is. However, look at the approval rate of him. Almost half of the people think we are heading to the wrong way. 
They talked about opportunities, which means they want to get rid of the senior people and hire young people so that they can promote young people and cut cost because there is no room for senior people to grow.
Anyway, the thing is College Board is doing SAT and there is no competitor. Everyone needs to take SAT, so why do management care?

I worked directly with my director in department. I worked with students who had disabilities who were seeking accommodation on college entrance exams and work with their school counselor or special education department or parents in this process as every case was different. My manager traveled a lot so he kept me in charge and I was responsible for our two vendors, ETS and Xerox, and traveled at times to train them on our systems and go over new policies and procedures and making sure they were up to bare and answer any inquires they may have. If I didn't travel, then I would train via WebEx and prepare training manuals and every two weeks or so, my manager and I work hold a conference call to keep an update on their department. After 2.5 years, my contact expired and unfortunately, I lost my job and have been unemployed since then with the exception of administrative assistant and receptionist work through various temp agency as well an Nanning for several years as I love kids, education and working in customer service as I am a people person, but with a shy personality.

First thing I do is sign in and and gather my answer documents, test booklets and roster. I prepare the classroom and make sure it is ready for the students to take the test. Arrange and record the seating chart before the students arrive. Get ready to greet the students at the door and check their admissions ticket and identification match. Once all students are seated I welcome them to the test center and ask them to look on their admissions ticket to make sure they are in the correct area and taking the right test. I continue to let them know the rules and regulations of the test and consequences of any misconduct. Then I proceed to explain how the testing and timing of the test will go. While the students are testing I walk around making sure all rules are being followed and everyone is working on the right section of the test. When the test is over I make sure to collect all test materials. I make Sure all test booklets and answer documents are accounted for. Then I dismiss the students. When the students leave I make sure all my paperwork is filed out and gather it to turn it in.

My experience while working at the College Board was good at times but was very bad at other times. Many of the managers come from area school systems varying from teachers, counselors or administrative positions. So the passion of seeing students excel and succeed academically is strongly there. The regional office often hosts workshops geared directly for school systems so that they can better administer College Board programs in the schools. Attending those meetings you will expect to be fed well along with the knowledge presented. However, the office life at its worst could be intimidating, catty, and petty. Unfortunately due to old management who have been there for over 20 years and newer management with lack of managerial skills only made matters worse. Working in a regional office also means there was very limited availability to advancements from within the company.

I have enjoyed working here until the last year.  Our team has been put under new management under which we are micromanaged and where rigid processes and tool use are creating frustration and anxiety for our team.   Our team can no longer support our stakeholders and end users as they need to be supported. Worse, our team has moved out of alignment with the rest of College Board, which is in the middle of implementing Agile across the organization.  I fear that the group I work in will become obstructive at best or obsolete at worst as the rest of our organization becomes more agile and we move backward into top down, command and control management of the work our team supports.

The culture was ok, it was generally relaxed socially but also if you were under the manager of one team it was deemed rude to talk to the manager of another team without going through your manager first. A lot of different cultures were celebrated and there were a lot of women in management positions. I also found it to be a pretty good environment for learning new things. They have sessions to learn specific languages you can sign up for and I was able to learn SQL as I worked. The main issue is their efficiency practices. They mainly hired people (before the downsize)  as bandaids to handle small repetitive tasks instead of making current people incorporate automation capabilities. Also not a lot of ability to move up, no matter how many years you’ve been there. 

Work/life balance was adequate until they changed their business model to support state business. 

Their only competition, the ACT, passed them up in quality and advanced technology. It drove the company to broker a new way of doing business connecting to school districts in which to provide their services. Rather than taking time to assess risk and change  impact , C-level staff chose to drive forward at full speed not taking into the account the technical implications that resulted.

IT turnover has since shot up and the intellectual property of managing a complicated service delivery model has increased service risk exponentially.

The Collegeboard has a great mission, however, if you like extreme challenges technical challenges and navigating complicated politics, this place is for you.

As a Support Center Specialist at College Board I would get to work 10 minutes before my start time. I would prioritize my day and complete any work that I hadn't accomplished the day before. I would then take phone calls and create tickets in the morning and in the afternoon I perform Desktop Support roles by taking tickets (some of them I create) and resolving them. This includes creating new hire setups, which is providing a monitor, imaged laptop, keyboard and mouse setup, College Board work Iphone, and Cisco desk phone to users. I would conclude the day by recording the inventory/ assets that are in our location.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Director 6 salaries reported	$132,667 per year
Software engineer 6 salaries reported	$136,000 per year
Senior software engineer 4 salaries reported	$131,250 per year
Senior director 5 salaries reported	$172,400 per year
Executive director 1 salary reported	$205,000 per year

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