I'm blown away by why they don't know exactly when they will post their scores. They had an entire month to grade this. This is ridiculous.
Thousands of people at hundreds of testing centers across the country take all take the same version of an exam that is used as one of primary metrics for determining whether they'll be accepted into extremely competitive programs with a very limited number of coveted seats. The difficulty of that exam has to be scaled against every other version that is administered, each also taken by thousands of other students.
They also have to ensure that all of the questions are fair, provide necessary information to answer, and are free of errors. This process is certainly done more than once. They also likely compare answers and look for scoring patterns at each testing center, to determine if the integrity of the exam was compromised.
It seems, at least to me, like something that would take a good deal of time. The days leading up to the release of the scores, everything is verified to make sure all of that was done correctly. On score release day, they likely perform final verifications before finally releasing scores. Each step likely takes a particular length of time, but if they need to go back and re-verify something, it'll take longer.
Look at them releasing scores as the launch of the space shuttle. There's a launch window within which they intend to have everything done. But, there can be any number of systems that need to be rechecked or random factors that can contribute to a delay.
That's why they can't give you an exact time. It'll just be "sometime after X and hopefully before Y".
