The New SAT Score Choice Policy: What Does This Mean For Your Child?
December 16th, 2008 - by
The College Board has adopted a Score ChoiceTM policy for the SAT that, according to the College Board website, will give students the option to choose, by test date, which SAT scores that they will send to colleges and thereby “allow students to put their best foot forward on test day by giving them more flexibility and control over their scores.”
Articles in U.S. News and World Report and Newsweek covering the College Board’s new test-reporting option raise a number of questions about the motivation for and benefits of the policy. The Newsweek piece reports that the new policy may be less altruistic and more financially motivated than the College Board statement implies. It cites an internal e-mail sent by Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT, that refers to “less kids taking SAT,” thereby “threatening the viability of the program itself.” U.S. News and World Report quotes a critic who has done the math: “[I]f roughly 3 percent of the 1.5 million students who take the test annually took it just one additional time-so 50,000 tests at $45 apiece-that would mean an extra $2.25 million for the College Board.” College Board is losing market share to ACT, so the potential financial motivation behind its choice of Score Choice is obvious enough.
Newsweek also reports that some colleges, Stanford, Cornell, Pomona, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California are named, have decided to opt out of the score choice policy and, instead, require applicants to submit all scores. The overzealous test-taker who sits for ten administrations of the SAT will be sorely disappointed to find that he must display all the fruits of his obsessive labors when applying to these schools. Such a test-taker would more wisely spend all of those testing hours on intelligent, academic study that builds a better G.P.A. as well as better test scores?
If the objective of a standardized test is to assess whether students are college ready, that is, proficient in a vital set of academic skills, then the relevance of SAT Score Choice does indeed seem quite negligible. Our years of experience at Academic Approach, where we have helped thousands of students prepare for both standardized exams and high school core curriculum, has made obvious to us that repeated testing without intelligent assessment, analysis, and curriculum yields little or no measurable improvement. Attempting to game the SAT by taking it ten times will look a bit desperate to admissions officers. At the same time, such repeated testing does not necessarily improve a student’s performance on the test or in the classroom.
Through our experience, we have developed our own best practices on standardized testing and test preparation-we teach in such a way that we are always simultaneously preparing our students in the fundamental skills that will be demanded of them not just on the standardized exams but also in their high school and college classrooms. Our practices accord with those of the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) as articulated in its recent study of the place of standardized testing in college admissions. In that report, NACAC stated that, “the best form of test preparation is focused on core knowledge content and on skills that will help prepare students for their academic future.”
What is the best way to achieve this effect?
- Take diagnostic tests to determine which test features your skills best-the SAT or ACT.
- Develop an academic, skill-building program around the test that is best for you, focusing in to save time and money.
- Take a maximum of three official SATs or ACTs (4 in extraordinary cases).
What really matters is early assessment, determining which test to take, designing an intelligent plan, and following up by moving through the appropriate course work. Choosing such an approach is the best, most reasonable path towards success on standardized exams.
Courtney Federle, PhD from The University of California, Berkeley, currently working as an educator at Academic Approach.
December 28th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
My question is how come the sat’s have to be so high to go to college? My daughter is struggling with both sat and the act . She’s been to tutoring and still she’ not getting a high score. She’s doing well in the classroom and she’s taking all core classes. Please help me understand this. I think this is not to help the student but discouraging.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:45 am
The entire process is discouraging and confusing. Many students are taking SAT prep courses along with tutoring . It has been said also that AP courses could help. After all is said and done some students do not do well on those tests and the student is hurt. Some students have to attend a school that accepts their SAT score or the student can transfer to the school they desire to attend.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:46 am
My fellow on Orkut shared this link and I’m not dissapointed that I came to your blog.