SAT Options : Fairer Admissions ::

For American college applicants, the SAT exam is a) a stressful three hours of bubbling, b) a flawed test that often measures socioeconomic standing instead of aptitude, c) just another confusing set of numbers that colleges insist high-school seniors turn in or d) all of the above. The answer most high- school juniors and sophomores would probably give to this one is d, and they wouldn’t be wrong. Indeed, the stress and confusion is just going to get worse as the College Board introduces their new SAT next January, containing a written section similar to the SAT II writing exam and lacking those infamous analogies.

As if such a thorough overhaul of the old test weren’t stressful enough for college applicants, college admissions committees aren’t being consistent on what they will accept from the high school class of 2006—will scores from either the old or the new test be ok or will applicants have to take the test over after the new exam comes out? Harvard recently determined that it would only accept the new exam from the applicant Class of 2006, but this is the wrong decision. Harvard should accept both the old and new SAT exam and set an example for other schools to do the same.

If Harvard only accepts the new exam, it will force students of the high school class of 2006 to take the SAT for the first time in the spring of their junior year (the first time the new exam will be offered), leaving very little time to retake it before early admissions deadlines, particularly if Harvard still requires SAT II subject tests. Currently many students take the SAT much earlier than their junior Spring and are more than satisfied with their scores. Let students take whichever exam allows them to best demonstrate their abilities. Harvard can easily handle accepting two different exams; in fact, they already do—the SAT and the ACT.

This policy of accepting both the old and the new SAT could be maintained until applicants no longer submit the old SAT. If in four years the admissions committee only receives one applicant with the old SAT because that person took the SAT when they were a freshman, so be it. The admissions officers can judge him or her with the old scores and everyone else with the new scores.

But even if Harvard accepts both exams, that still leaves the system rife with inconsistency. Yale plans to accept either exam, while the University of California system will only accept the new exam, for example. We hope that Harvard will change its policy and that other colleges will follow its example accepting both tests, if only for consistency’s sake. Otherwise, the SAT will be to college admissions what analogies are to the old test—unnecessarily frustrating.