Some high school students that are taking their AP exams online using their iPhone or iPad are running into issues with Apple’s HEIC image format, which is not compatible with the website used by the AP College Board to accept tests.
The Verge reports AP exams taken by high school students in the United States have a written component, and the exam requires students to take and upload a photo of their written responses.
High schoolers using an iOS device to upload the photo have run into problems with the HEIC format the device uses to store the image, which would not upload, causing the students to fail the test. Thousands of students now need to retake their AP exams. And understandably, they are irritated that the College Board hadn’t anticipated the issue ahead of time.
The College Board has now provided instructions to students, telling them how to swap over to the JPEG image format on their device, or how to convert an HEIC image to JPEG before submitting it.
Students need to do the following:
- Open the Settings app.
- Scroll down to “Camera” and tap it.
- Tap on the “Formats” option.
- Select “Most Compatible.”
With the “Most Compatible” option selected, photos will always be saved as JPEGs instead of in the HEIC file format.
Students that have already saved their exam photos as HEIC can convert them to JPEGs by mailing the images to themselves in the Mail app on their iPhone or iPad, which the College Board says allows for easy format conversion.
The College Board also plans to allow students that run into issues submitting their tests to send the images through email, so the Mail app will convert the images automatically. However, this is only a solution for students who have yet to take their exams, as students that have already run into the issue will be required to retake their tests.
