Boston Globe Monday 11/24/08
Once-mighty SAT losing its clout
Nearly 800 colleges drop exam as entry requirement
Once-mighty SAT losing its cloutNearly 800 colleges drop exam as entry requirement
By Peter Schworm, Globe Staff | November 24, 2008
Finora Franck didn't study for her first go-round with the SAT, and it showed. Now the senior at Boston Latin School is keeping her flashcards close at hand, hoping the algebra and geometry formulas will stick this time.
But as Franck prepares to retake the test, she is more angry than nervous, frustrated that a so-so performance on a four-hour test could eclipse four years of hard work and strong grades.
"At the schools I'm looking at, my score's a no-no," she said, naming Columbia University as her first choice. "The SAT is not my friend. We just don't get along."
Increasingly, colleges are coming over to Franck's point of view. The SAT (formerly known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test), that longtime teenage bugaboo and pillar of the college admissions process, is under heavy assault on several fronts.
Earlier this year, Smith College and Wake Forest University decided to drop the standardized test as a requirement for admission. The colleges, two of the most highly touted among nearly 800 schools to take the step, cited studies that the test favors wealthier students, and voiced growing concern that SAT results are not valid predictors of college success.
This fall, the country's leading college admissions group, led by Harvard's admissions dean, urged colleges to downplay test results in their acceptance decisions and to consider ending the SAT requirement. Coming after a year of study, the National Association for College Admission Counseling's report marked the most far-reaching critique of the role of the controversial test thus far and has rekindled the long-running clash over the proper use of the test in admissions.
At the same time, a new College Board policy that allows students to show colleges only their best scores drew criticism that it would mainly help wealthy students who could boost their scores with high-priced tutoring.
People who believe colleges place too much weight on test results say the renewed scrutiny could mark a tipping point in the debate.
"Time will show we're on the right side of history," said Audrey Smith, director of admission at Smith College. "We all know we can make well-informed admissions decisions without it."
Despite the recent scrutiny, the vast majority of colleges say they have no plans to abandon the test, which they contend is a useful measure of college readiness and a crucial baseline to judge applicants from varied backgrounds.
The College Board, which administers the SAT, said studies have consistently shown that the standardized test is an accurate predictor of college success and provides a safeguard against high school grade inflation. Board officials said they agreed with the finding of the admissions group that the SAT should be judged in combination with high school grades and other factors, including content-based tests such as SAT subject and advanced placement tests.
College administrators defend their emphasis on test scores, saying they are just one factor in assessing academic performance and potential.
"It's a single data point that must be evaluated in context," said Lee Coffin, dean of admissions at Tufts University. "If you misuse the test, it's a missed opportunity."
Tufts and many other universities say they practice "holistic admissions," an approach that considers students' background and the strength of their high school in determining how they will fare in college. Relying too heavily on test results, which studies have shown correlate closely with income and educational background, reinforces social inequities, they say.
"It is not an intelligence test, and aptitude is going to be strongly affected by opportunity," said Tom Parker, dean of admission and financial aid at Amherst College, which requires the test. "And the difference in opportunity [between the rich and poor] is almost unimaginable."
As a result, students from low-income families who have attended mediocre schools and who scored 1,000 on the SAT may be every bit as talented as wealthy suburban students with standout scores, Parker and other admissions officers say.
The report found that "test scores appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity, and parental educational attainment."
Officials at colleges that have gone test-optional in recent years agree. The shift broadened the application pool by encouraging students with mediocre scores to apply, students whom admissions officers had struggled to attract.
"Despite everything you try to say, the curtain comes down" when high school students see average test scores that are well above their own, said Ann McDermott, director of admissions at the College of the Holy Cross, which abandoned the SAT requirement in 2005. Now, she said, "We have kids in the pool who may not have been there before."
The SAT's primacy in college admissions has not only spawned a vast test-prep industry catering to students desperate to boost their chances of getting into a top school; it has also sharply defined how colleges are perceived and how applicants perceive themselves, many college officials and higher education specialists say.
Because average SAT scores are a key measure of prestige, colleges looking to raise their profile often rely on them heavily to assemble their freshman class. And high school students are often intimidated from even applying to colleges with average scores well above their own.
Eliminating the requirement, on the other hand, "completely changes the dynamic," said Kristen Tichenor, vice president for enrollment management at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which last year became the first nationally ranked science and engineering university to make the SAT optional for admissions.
This year, the college had applications from underrepresented minorities increase by one-third, and more women and minorities ultimately enrolled this fall as well.
Harvard's dean of admissions, Bill Fitzsimmons, said standardized tests that are based on high school course work have proven superior to the SAT at determining college readiness and said he hoped such tests will begin to play a larger role in admissions decisions.
"Wouldn't it be better for students to study chemistry and math and language, than trying to game a somewhat esoteric set of test-taking skills?" he asked.
Yet Harvard "could never be SAT-optional," he said, because of the need for a national measure to identify top students, including those from urban or rural high schools that don't send many students to elite colleges.
"We really don't know what those grades mean," he said. "It's a little bit of a catch-22."
But David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said high school grades are more accurate than they used to be, making the SAT, once seen as a way to "find jewels in the rough," less valuable.
"It has gotten to the point where the research suggests that the SAT doesn't tell you much that the grades don't," he said.
At Boston Latin School, a group of seniors decidedly dismissed the test as a valid measure.
"The SAT only measures how good you are at taking the SAT," said Alicia Williams, a senior from Jamaica Plain. "It's a waste of a Saturday morning."
© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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