College Board Reviews

Pros

I've been at the College Board for almost six months within the IT division. I appreciated the solid on-boarding process, incredible benefits, and positive work environment. As part of my on-boarding process, I had lunch with the CTO and the VP's that lead each division below, as an open forum to get information about the company, its history, and it's current leaders. After the review of strategic planning for the year,...

Cons

The working environment is extremely relaxed, to a fault at times.

Pros

Great benefits, great mission, lots of smart, fun people who are dedicated to the mission

Cons

Too many managers/directors have an us vs. them mentality about departments that are not their own. There doesn't seem to be any real effort to curtail this toxic behavior. It's ridiculous and inappropriate--not to mention terrible for morale and for getting things done. While the company recently introduced some new guidelines on how to be better employees and better bosses, leadership does not seem to be taking...

Advice to Management

Actively discourage all the politicking and backbiting between departments by creating a system where employees at all levels of the organization can surface problems and inefficiencies without fear of reprisal. Do not let toxic and incompetent managers drive out good employees. Give managers more specific and concrete guidelines/checklists on best practices for leading employees. And, find a way to verify that...

Pros

Strong mission and smart and dedicated coworkers

Cons

Can be too bureaucratic, too many outdated processes

Pros

Compensation and Benefits are good.

Cons

Hierarchial, Micro-management., limited growth opportunities

Pros

Great Benefits, best in the area. They even cover 60K in college tuition for 4 years for your kids, if they are in college. Work perks discounts. Great work life balance.

Cons

Some of the management has archaic way of thinking Progressive idea averse and risk averse (in some departments) They do re orgs without checking with the employees. Lands loyal employees in helpless situations. You may end up in a team or capability for which you don't have any skills or any aspirations.

Advice to Management

Check with employees before doing reorgs, as they may have bright ideas, if not brighter than management. Trust the people you hire. Match people with the work they love to do. Don't make organisational and strategic changes without checking with them. It may work in the short term but in the long run you are creating a culture that lacks hope and is indifferent, which is the worst possible culture. HR needs to step...

Pros

The most innovative not for profit you can be a part of that is truly making a positive difference in the lives of millions of aspiring students across the country.

Cons

Need to allow for more remote work for staff. 1 day a week telecommute policy is good and can be more on some teams, but remote work hasn't been formalized as a policy.

Advice to Management

Keep doing what you're doing!

Pros

Good Benefits. Good people to work with and nice working environment.

Cons

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....

Advice to Management

N/A, this won't change anything.

Pros

-Excellent benefits -Beautiful NYC office -Decent work/life balance

Cons

-Zero path to promotion for high performers -Nepotism and favoritism abound -High tolerance for mediocrity, incompetence, and underperformance

Advice to Management

Do what you say, and mean what you say. Your inauthentic introduction of the competencies around quality/efficiency, command of evidence, and be a great boss becomes completely transparent when few or none of your senior leadership team actually exhibits or enforces these competencies in practice. Highly qualified high performers will continue to jump ship until you act in a way that showcases their value to your org.