ETS Will No Longer Note Special Test Conditions

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) announced yesterday that it will no longer flag the test scores of students who take standardized tests with special accommodations for their disabilities.

For now, the announcement only applies to the GMAT, GRE, TOFEL and Praxis exams. The College Board, an independent agency affiliated with the ETS, will decide by March 31 if the same policy will apply to SAT scores.

Flagged scores are currently distinguished by the notation, "Scores Obtained Under Special Conditions," in score reports sent to college admissions offices and students.

Director of Harvard Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis '73 said she is not concerned about receiving scores that have been taken under special conditions but are not denoted as such.

She said that the potential change in score-reporting would not affect the College's admission process.

"This is actually not a big deal," McGrath Lewis wrote in an e-mail. "Tests play a useful, but limited, role in our selection."

She estimated that Harvard currently only receives "perhaps a hundred or so" applications with flagged scores.

The College Board only requires that there be "appropriate documentation on file in school," in order for students to be considered eligible for special testing accommodations, according to material on its website.

The College Board also suggests that students who have "received accommodation for tests he or she took in school," consider taking tests with special accommodations.

A high school administrator at Harvard-Westlake, a prestigious private school in California which routinely sends students to Harvard College, said yesterday he was concerned that untimed test scores will now pass unnoticed when students are considered for admission.

Christopher Gragg, the SAT administrator at Harvard-Westlake, said unmarked scores will give an "unfair advantage to some students."

"As it is there is already more [untimed testing] than I feel there should be," Gragg said. "Why wouldn't you take 4.5 hours on an exam [if you could]?"

McGrath Lewis said she thinks Gragg's response is unfounded.

"Our experience has been that students taking untimed tests

rarely score much better (or worse) than they do on standard-administration," McGrath Lewis wrote.

McGrath Lewis said the Harvard admissions office views grades as a more important factor than tests when considering a candidate for admission.

"Grades over time are ordinarily more useful in making the academic assessment of a candidate," she wrote.

The ETS announcement follows a recent court settlement in a California suit filed two years ago by a physically disabled man who believes his failure to be accepted to business school was the result of his flagged scores.

--Staff writer Nicole B. Usher can be reached at usher@fas.harvard.edu.