Are the SATs a Must for College Admissions?
Proponents call standardized test scores a fair, reliable predictor of a student's success in college. Others say that high school records are just as good as SAT scores and that a nuanced admissions process yields a more diverse and academically strong student body. Are the tests necessary?
Edited by Steve St. Angelo
Yes
By Gaston Caperton
Ex-governor of West Virginia and president of the College Board, which owns and develops the SAT
Decision-making has been greatly aided in this age of technology by the availability of accurate data. The wise use of data was slow to be adopted in the field of education, but today it has become critical to the decision-making process. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan often talks about how the proper use of critical data sets can measure, monitor, and improve student performance....
No
By Jill Tiefenthaler
Professor of economics and provost of North Carolina's Wake Forest University since 2007
The accepted framework for college admissions is showing rust at the joints and no longer supports the right parts of the educational enterprise. It is time to rethink college admissions, and particularly the role of standardized testing. With only marginal predictive value for performance in college, standardized scores do nothing to suggest what a student might contribute to the character and vitality of an intellectual community....
What do you think?
Reader Comments
Admission don't need SAT
I see no poiunts in the SAT, every student can study as hard as other. SAT it just only a test like no other test. The only helping the student is having them study hard not putting something like the SAT and give them more pressure.
College Admissions Consulting
The Admissions Experts are a fraud, a friend of mine wasted a lot of money on them. I've used Alliant Consulting out of Redlands, they are fantastic and prices are very reasonable. www.alliantcollegeprep.com
College Admissions is a Game.
I did well on the SAT, CEEB and whatever. I did so well that as a teenager, my highschool let me teach the Highschool Chemistry Course for the whole year as I had learned chemistry on my own before I took the course. I even passed the GRE Practice Exams for Chemical Engineering. At that time, I was the best science student in the highschool ever. Then I was scouted somehow by the University Of Rochester for a science scholarship which suddenly fell through the hole when they figured out that I was Jewish.
I went into the US Navy, got my GI Bill and now have a Masters Degree, and I retired from working at NASA as a Group Leader Engineer.
The point of all this is that evidently doing well on tests has nothing to do with being accepted by a college; the human factor comes into play. And we all know how erratic humans can be.
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