SATs or The Devil We Know

The College Board? Harvard’s never met her — or, rather, we’ve been too quick to forget.

Last December, the University joined a chorus of elite institutions to announce it would extend its pandemic-era test-optional policy, giving four more applicant classes the option not to submit standardized testing scores. The decision marked yet another crisis for the College Board, the non-profit behind the similarly (in)famous SAT exam. Caught flat-footed by equity concerns, successful competition from the ACT, and the logistical challenges of pandemic-era test administration, the Board has struggled to adapt to rapidly changing times.

But this January, amidst a growing list of entirely test-optional colleges, the centenary non-profit finally agreed to alter its flagship test, if only slightly. Starting in 2024 for domestic test-takers, the SAT will be shortened by an hour and moved online. Suffice to say, the changes in test format are an underwhelming, somewhat bizarre response to the barrage of public criticism against standardized testing. They exemplify exactly the kind of complacency that has led the College Board, college admissions more broadly, astray. We are glad, at least, to see evidence that the organization is feeling the heat it deserves.

We can’t, however, join the most radical voices who urge us to forget about the College Board altogether; we can’t, in good faith, advocate for extending testing-optionality indefinitely. In the rogue’s gallery of Common App components, standardized testing is the devil we know.

Granted, the SAT has serious problems. It’s far from absolute objectivity. Combined SAT scores, on a scale from 400 to 1600, vary substantially by demographic group. White and Asian students score over 1100 on average, while all other groups average less than 1000. Higher-income students are more than twice as likely as lower-income students to get a top-tier score. Steps to increase equity, like the College Board’s free test-prep collaboration Khan Academy, are admirable, but seem to have had little effect on the test’s racial disparities.

In the face of those problems, moving the test online warrants a shrug, at best. It may quicken the turnaround of scores, which is nice; it may make the test a little harder for students who can’t practice on computers, which is not. The only thing absolutely clear ex ante is how little an effect it will have next to the sweeping problems identified above.

And yet. However subjective standardized testing might be (and it is), it is still surely more objective than the alternatives. The best tutor can’t take the test for you; even the worst could write you a tear-jerking personal essay. With crew teams and orchestra slots to fill at every elite college, expensive extracurriculars provide another easy avenue for rich students to distinguish themselves. AP classes abound at better-resourced high schools, and given two straight-A candidates, the one with the harder course load is likely to look better.

In this blackboxed morass of admissions criteria, subjectivity is a subsidy for the well-connected. The more complex and subjective a system, the more opportunities for admissions consultants and college-educated parents to game it. Without accountability from reporting average SAT scores, it becomes even easier for elitist universities to allow their baser predilections to enter the process — the endowment needs tending, after all.

Having a reasonably objective, standardized testing element to these applications addresses this unfair advantage, at least in part, and helps to level the playing field in an otherwise highly skewed arena. Post-pandemic, standardized testing has to stay.

Right now, it’s not certain that testing requirements will return. One very silver lining? The College Board is still feeling the pressure. Cosmetic changes like digitization won’t relieve it. To win back universities and earn its survival, the Board should take seriously its responsibility to provide a test as free from class and cultural bias as anything can be in our society. Because we may need a standardized test, but we don’t need this one. If the College Board can’t improve, someone else will.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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