The bell rings. Indecipherable shouts come from the bloodthirsty crowd. I come out bouncing, ready to fight. I look into the eyes of my opponent, the College Board, and that’s all I’ve got so far. I’m having a hard time imagining what the College Board looks like.

The College Board, for those of you who don’t know, is the organization that collect money from high school students who want to attend college. As a side thing, it also administers tests such as the SAT, SAT 2s, PSAT, SSAT, SAT 23s and the McSATWICH’OK. (I made up those last two.)

Anyway, I recently paid the College Board $30 to send my scores to a college that I’m applying to. That’s right, one college for $30. Actually, to be fair, it was only $29.50. The bill inspired me to share my experiences and grievances with the college application process with all of you, my closest friends.

For me, the application process started my sophomore year in high school when I received my first pieces of college literature. Excited that schools were interested in me, I eagerly filled out the first few reply cards. What I did not know was that by filling out a reply card, I was giving that school permission to send me a dump truck full of mail every day for the rest of my high school career. In the long run, it didn’t matter though; because even the schools to whom I didn’t reply did the same thing, sending everything from view books and course listings to posters and puzzles — one school mailed me an associate professor of history. Upset that he wasn’t even a full professor, I wrote “Return to Ill-mannered Sender” on his forehead and sent him back.

The purpose of the mail is to attract students to their respective schools. It actually helps in introducing schools to students, but beyond that it all is pretty much the same, “We’re the best school ever” stuff. In choosing colleges where I wanted to apply, I used college guidebooks (Princeton Review, Fiske’s, etc.) that rank schools, campus visits, interviews and the advice of friends who had already gone through the process.

Once I had narrowed my list, I had to figure out a way to get into the schools. Grades, extracurricular involvement and other factors are all important, but one thing pretty much every admissions committee wants to see is good standardized test scores. Enter the College Board. Junior year I had to take the PSAT and the SAT, and then senior year I took the SAT again to improve my score and three SAT 2 Subject Tests. At $30 apiece, these tests quickly add up. What’s more, the College Board also administers AP tests, which allow students to attempt to earn college credit without going to college.

The costs up to this point may seem high, but still within reason. However, they soon get ridiculous. If you want the scores to get to the college in less than five weeks, you need to pay a “rush” fee of $23 in addition to the $7 for the scores themselves. The worst fees the College Board charges are those to see your own scores. Two weeks after a test, it makes your scores available online for about $13 dollars. The tests are graded, and the results are available at the click of a button, so anxious students pay this fee to see their scores and don’t wait the extra week or two to get their results for free. There’s no excuse for that besides 100 percent exploitation. However, the College Board is very gracious to its customers, and after you type in your credit card information, it offers you “special deals” for books about college for 30 bucks.

So I guess the College Board did do one thing to improve my educational experience: It made me want to go to college and do well. It made me want to do so well that I can go to a prestigious law school and then sue the pants off of the College Board.

— Caleb Powers is a senior at Free State High School.