For decades, students, teachers and admission officers have objected to the SAT, but the majority of the academic world dismissed the protesters as “sour grapes” or as members of “less rigorous” institutions. Recently, however, an increasing number of colleges have abandoned traditional reliance on the SAT to adopt a new admission process where SAT scores play little, if any, part.
Despite the SAT’s recent addition of the writing section, and especially in light of the College Board’s scoring errors on the October 2005 test, more schools, academically prestigious or not, are making the SAT optional. While this decision of “testing-optional” is not appropriate for every school, some schools may benefit from the policy.
Currently, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) records over 700 colleges that do not require the SAT. Although many of these colleges have mediocre academic programs at best, 24 of them rank among the top 100 liberal arts colleges as listed by U.S. News, according to Robert A. Schaeffer of FairTest. Of the 24, seven changed their policies within the last 18 months.
The issues at stake — accurate representation of student abilities, diversity in admissions, colleges’ academic integrity and rankings — stir emotions and present ethical difficulties.
Supporters of testing-optional admissions argue that the SAT indicates only a narrow spectrum of a student’s abilities, particularly verbal and math.
“We in colleges and universities must choose our applicants with a less blunt instrument of selection,” said Joanne V. Creighton, president of the Mount Holyoke College, which is concluding an extensive three-year experiment with the testing-optional policy.
Since years of studies show the SAT favors students from wealthier backgrounds over those from lower income and minority backgrounds, supporters believe that by adopting testing-optional admissions, they may increase diversity.
The creator of the SAT, Carl Brigham, eventually rejected the test himself, saying it was “one of the most glorious fallacies in the history of science. … The test scores very definitely are a composite including schooling, family background, familiarity with English and everything else, relevant and irrelevant.”
Schools who have used testing-optional policies for some years report that diversity of applicants has increased as predicted. At Drew University, 54 black students will matriculate this fall, a dramatic increase from the 12 who did last year. Many of these schools also report that students who did not submit SAT scores are doing equally well as student who submitted scores.
The opposing camp argues that SAT scores act as an important standard of student ability, since grades and level of challenge of coursework vary from school to school.
After trying testing-optional admissions during the 1990s, Lafayette College has since returned to a mandatory policy. Barry McCartney, dean of enrollment services at Lafayette, said that the SAT does not turn students into numbers, since admissions officers place more or less emphasis on an individual’s SAT score based on other aspects of the student’s profile, like family background and recommendation letters. One of McCartney’s major concerns with testing-optional admissions is that it leads to inaccurate reports of average SAT scores, since only those students with high scores would submit them.
Colin S. Driver, president of Reed College, shares this concern, saying that schools who drop mandatory SATs want to increase rank and prestige by artificially inflating average scores rather than improving the admission process.
“I sometimes think I should write a handbook for college admission officials titled ‘How to Play the U.S. News & World Report Ranking Game, and Win!’ I would devote the first chapter to a tactic called ‘SAT optional,’” Driver said.
While colleges should not purposefully misrepresent scores, the concern over testing-optional’s effect on rank is insignificant compared with effects on fairness, applicant number and diversity.
Research by colleges such as Mount Holyoke provides valuable information about the effects of mandatory versus optional SAT reporting, which other schools should note. Yet each school must decide which method will create the best student body possible; whether an optional SAT will increase much-needed diversity, or a mandatory SAT will maintain a standard of achievement. The SAT is not an uncontrollable, fate-determining monster, but a tool to be used, or not, at the discretion of each college admission board.
Katie Vick is a junior in the College of Arts and Science.
