Admissions officers should not rely on the SAT

Monday, October 13, 1997

Admissions officers should not rely on the SAT

TESTING: Heavily weighted exam demonstrates

students’ financial preparedness, not ability to learn

Every year, thousands of students gather at the gates of the
University of California, hoping to be granted admission to one of
the prestigious campuses. Admissions officers, overwhelmed by the
sheer number of applicants, have come to rely on numbers –
specifically, students’ scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test
(SAT) – to determine who gets in. And every year, qualified
students are denied admission, because the heavily-weighted scores
fail to truly demonstrate a student’s ability to succeed in
college.

Since making the SAT a requirement for UC admission in 1968, the
university has placed entirely too much faith in the exam as a
means of demonstrating students’ academic abilities. Students with
excellent grades and low SAT scores have not been admitted to the
university. Test-taking ability is not necessarily a valid measure
of a student’s intellectual potential.

There are several factors that invalidate the SAT’s credibility.
For starters, the test discriminates according to economic class.
Students who have more money are going to score higher because of
the number of test preparation workshops and courses out there. For
$700 or $800, students can elect to take a class which promises to
boost scores by a hundred or more points. If you have the money,
you’re in luck. If you don’t have the money to pay for the course,
you’re handicapped.

Essentially, what you’re doing is buying extra points.

But you can’t buy your way through college.

In addition, there’s a correlation between the test’s class bias
and a cultural bias. Some minority groups just aren’t as wealthy as
others. Therefore, many people in the minority groups simply cannot
afford to take these $800 test preparation classes.

In addition, there’s also concern about the test’s content. Not
as a whole, but there are a handful of questions in the exam that
require knowledge that certain minority groups may not have much
exposure to. And as a result, minority students are unable to
answer certain questions, leading to a lowered score.

Another problem with the SAT is that one of the keys to
mastering the exam is memorization of key vocabulary words. If you
remember these words, which are given in the prep courses, you’re
assured of answering some of the questions correctly. A student who
did not take the course and was not given a list of words might not
do as well on the test, but could very well be a higher-caliber
student. Students should not be punished for not being able to
afford expensive courses.

A score of 1600 isn’t very conclusive. There’s really no means
of knowing where the score came from. It could mean that you’re
intellectually gifted. Or it could mean you took a test preparation
course. You could have sat down and read the dictionary. When the
admissions officer reads a prospective student’s application, and
sees a number, he has no way of knowing what it really means.

And that’s the danger in placing so much emphasis on the SAT.
The real test is to interview the student and examine him/her from
all angles, to get a full view of his/her strengths and
weaknesses.

The College Board must stop selling old copies of the SAT to
test-prep companies, and make the test harder to prepare for. It
also needs to ensure that the questions on the test are fair, and
show no bias for or against any single group .Only then could the
scores have any significance at all.

The UC officials need to take a close, hard look at the test. As
it is, the SAT is full of problems which really don’t provide
insight into the students’ ability to succeed. And until these
things are done away with, UC should not consider the SAT the one
source to determine a student’s admission.

There’s more to college than just memorizing words.