collegeboard.org

Readiness by lane

Green: collegeboard.org. Thin bar: Education & Online Learning peer median.

Priority fixes for collegeboard.org

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Accelerate

   Static files cached for 30 days or more

   Observed: A same-site stylesheet or script was cacheable for 12 days, short of the 30-day benchmark.

   Why it matters: Returning visitors and later page views reuse cached files instead of downloading them again.

   What to do: Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.

   45% of Education & Online Learning peers do this. Limit: Read from the homepage response only; other pages or regions may send different headers.

   Guide: Browser Caching Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 1 external script without async or defer.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   42% of Education & Online Learning peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

3. Priority 3 · Harden

   Certificate lifetime of 100 days or less

   Observed: The certificate from DigiCert Inc had a 198-day validity period, longer than the 100-day maximum that applies from March 2027.

   What to do: Move to automated issuance and renewal now, while you still have time to test it.

   60% of Education & Online Learning peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   HTTP/3 advertised

   Observed: The homepage did not advertise HTTP/3 through an Alt-Svc header.

   What to do: Turn on HTTP/3 at your CDN. Browsers fall back to HTTP/2 automatically, so the risk is low.

   25% of Education & Online Learning peers do this.

   Guide: CDN Guide for Website Owners

What collegeboard.org already does well

Practices fewer than half of Education & Online Learning peers use.

• Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.25% of peers
• HSTS kept for at least a yearHSTS with a 365-day max-age covering subdomains.34% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=reject.36% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.collegeboard.org/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

DigiCert, 198-day validity, expiring 2027-01-28

CDN or edge

Akamai, Acquia

Platform or framework

Drupal

DNS operators

Amazon Route 53

HSTS

max-age 365 days, includeSubDomains

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

40 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

0

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Education & Online Learning sites

• cambridgeone.org72
• examsnet.com72
• iibf.org.in72
• utp.edu.pe73
• uwaterloo.ca73

Education & Online Learning readiness benchmark