It’s not as if your SAT score decides everything: If you know the right people, a score of 1206 is enough to get you into the Oval Office.
But with mounting evidence that scores do not accurately predict student performance in college, more and more universities are dropping the SAT as an application requirement. With worries about unequal access to testing preparation programs, the gradual de-emphasis of the SAT may lead to a welcome change in the way colleges look at applicants — and in the way applicants look at college.
At last month’s meeting of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, the use of the SAT as a key admissions component was a hot-button issue, with a substantial number of participants warming up to the idea of dropping the test.
Representatives from Bates College in Maine described how their school became one of the first competitive colleges to abandon the SAT as an application prerequisite after it found that the school’s high-performing students (measured by college GPA) were not especially likely to have a high incoming SAT score.
In the years since the college has dropped the testing requirement, student data has consistently confirmed that the SAT measure alone is not a good predictor of collegiate success, according to Bates’ Dean of Admissions Wylie L. Mitchell. Students who choose to submit scores usually have combined scores that are roughly 150 points higher than the average of students who do not submit their scores — but the difference in college GPA for the two groups, according to Bates, is a mere 0.05 points.
And there’s more. One of the panelists at the meeting, Matthew Mergen of New Jersey’s Drew University, told the group that consideration of application options encouraged input from the school’s staff. “It really energized the faculty,” Mergen said, citing a burst of interest from staff members in how the school defines “quality.”
And quality is that intangible thing universities are after. An inherent problem with relying heavily on the SAT is that it’s hard to capture an accurate snapshot in a number. One possibility brought up at the meeting is the submission of a portfolio of graded work from high school, which is a far more accurate example of a student’s ability to perform in an academic setting than a timed multiple-choice test.
The SAT is not without its strengths, of course. Despite its limitations as a test, the SAT is useful in that it’s easy to rapidly compare the score of one student to another’s, particularly for large schools such as the University of California (which received almost 300,000 applications in fall 2006). And with rampant grade-point inflation weakening the meaning of high school GPAs, the numerical reference provided by the SAT can be one of the only unbiased comparisons of students. Perhaps most importantly, it’s cheap. How much would it cost to hire and train enough readers to comb through the high school work of thousands upon thousands of applicants?
But in the current academic climate in which the difference between a valedictorian and a no-name is only a miniscule difference in high school GPA, a de-emphasis of numerical measures would help schools truly differentiate between those likely to succeed and those who just test well. After all, the SAT — and all standardized tests — are meant to be a measure of academic ability, not a beast unto themselves. Why not go straight to the source?
