UnSAT

When the SAT was first administered in 1926, it was intended to provide a neutral, unbiased assessment of the “aptitude” of college applicants. The next 80 years, however, would prove the SAT to be anything but neutral. A good SAT score has always added sparkle to the resumes of the most affluent college applicants, while casting a shadow onto those from less privileged backgrounds. The SAT at times seems almost directly proportional to the amount of money one’s parents make. Among test-takers in 2008, for instance, those whose family incomes were above $200,000 averaged 570 in SAT math, while students with family incomes below $20,000 had an average score of 456. A commission of prominent college admissions figures—headed by Harvard’s own dean of admissions and financial aid, William R. Fitzsimmons ’67—has finally challenged the status quo with a year-long study that came to a not-so-startling conclusion: The SAT is not the best gauge of college-readiness.

Steve Syverson, commission member and vice president for enrollment at Lawrence University, already made standardized tests optional at his institution several years ago. He was quoted in The New York Times concerning the SAT and the ACT, “We’re all just making assumptions about these tests. We’ve all grown up with it. It’s embedded in the culture. If you really ask around the country, how many admissions officers can tell you at their institution what the predictive validity of the test is? What does it add to our understanding? What do tests help you predict? You’d find a lot of them equate these tests with intelligence. It’s not an intelligence test.”

It is certainly refreshing to see leading figures in American higher education awaken to the fact that a high SAT score does not necessarily equal a qualified college candidate. That said, they should not act upon that discovery by abolishing consideration of the test without proposing a viable alternative to discriminate between certain college applicants. Flawed though it may be, the SAT, along with the ACT, remains the only standardized aspect of the American college admissions process. Without such a test, it would prove difficult to compare students coming from educational backgrounds as disparate as home school and public school, private and magnet, charter and international. The SAT plays much too large a role in today’s admissions process for it to be eliminated entirely. The recent findings should serve as a springboard for further research and inquiry into reforming the SAT or, should that fail, replacing it with an entirely new test.

Despite whatever inconvenience it entails, over 750 colleges and universities nationwide have moved to eliminate standardized test scores from consideration in their admission processes. For schools that have sufficient monetary resources and staff support to enable such an endeavor, evaluating each applicant on the basis of the “big picture”—without heavy consideration of standardized testing—is indeed ideal. In a perfect world, all schools would ignore standardized test scores and evaluate each applicant contextually, taking into account their educational history, socioeconomic background, and personal achievements. But with the exception of the 750 schools with optional standardized test score submission, it is a luxury not every college can afford.

It is the responsibility of institutions with ample resources at their command to familiarize themselves with the educational privileges and pitfalls of every applicant they evaluate. If the SAT must persist as an admissions criterion, it must do so in a deemphasized form. A low SAT score should not preclude an applicant from admission if the applicant’s SAT II subject test scores, AP scores, and high school grades show that the applicant is qualified. Surely, a more holistic admissions process is not too much to ask of universities that pride themselves on the attention they lavish on each student.

In the coming years, arguments about the merits and problems of SAT reform are sure to spring forth from the can of worms Fitzsimmons’ commission has so bravely opened. In the midst of the impending controversy, it will be most important to remember that standardized tests are only a small part of the myriad problems that exist in the American school system. No matter what renovations the SAT undergoes, it will not change the fact that some American children receive an education far inferior to the education of other American children—those whose parents happen to make more money. Until the evils of bad policy and lack of funds are addressed within American secondary school education, higher education—and its admissions procedures—can never be free of socioeconomic bias.