By Chelsea Titus
Round Table editor
Does the SAT really matter when it comes to college applications? Is it really a decision factor that will determine if one gets accepted or not?
Whether Middletown High School students feel that the test is critical for acceptance into college, they still showed determination to succeed, shown by how the MHS SAT scores improved by 32 points in the 2010 results.
Students in Frederick County scored an average of 519 for the critical reading, 532 for math, and 508 for the writing portions of the SAT. The combined average was 1559.
Middletown students beat these scores with an average of 542 for critical reading, 551 for math, and 524 for writing. The average combined score was 1617.
Seventy-four percent of MHS seniors, about 250, took the SAT. Middletown held the highest number of seniors who took the SAT.
“The SAT was really hard, but I was confident with my scores because I had such great teachers,” says junior Maddie Nissel.
These scores may seem great, but how do they determine the possibility of acceptance into an institution?
College admissions counselors claim that they look at applications holistically and that SAT scores are not the most important part of admissions. Over the past few years, the test’s defenders have started to lose ground. About 280 of the nation’s 2,083 four-year colleges and universities make the SAT optional for some or all applicants, according to cnn.com.
A handful of prestigious colleges, including Franklin and Marshall and Mount Holyoke have joined their ranks since the early ’90s and say they aren’t admitting the SAT as a fault. Hamilton College is also considering making the SAT optional. Countless other schools have de-emphasized the SAT in more subtle ways — continuing to ask for scores but weighing other factors more heavily.
In Maryland, universities such as Salisbury include the “test-optional” alternative on applications, where the applicants may choose whether they wish to have their scores considered in admission.
The SAT may be losing popularity amongst colleges but was once very prominent. By looking back at the history of the SAT and the College Board itself, it’s easy to see how the SAT became so accepted.
Promoted by the College Board, the SAT first became fully adopted by the University of California, then the biggest university in the nation.
Within a matter of years, as college attendance skyrocketed, many admissions offices came to rely heavily on the standardized SAT scores to help decide among applications.
However, the popularity of the SAT did not last long. By the 1970s, two arguments emerged.
The first that drew the most media attention claimed that the test was inherently biased against African Americans and Latinos, who to this day score worse on average than Caucasians. African Americans score about 120 points lower on average than Caucasians.
Anti-testers often explain the racial gap by saying most of the test writers are Caucasian and import cultural biases into the SAT. However, the College Board says SAT questions are always previewed by a large sample of test takers, and any questions that generate racial disparities are tossed out before they appear on the SAT.
Research shows that even high-achieving African-American pupils may be distracted by a fear that they will confirm the stereotype that they won’t don’t do well on intelligence tests.
Testing of this theory was proven by giving an exam to two mixed-race groups of students.
One group was told that the exam was a simple problem-solving exercise; the other was told that their scores would show how smart they were. The Caucasian kids scored about the same no matter what they were told. The African American kids who thought they were taking an intelligence test performed considerably worse than those told the test was no big deal.
The racial gap in test scores is one of the most vexing problems in social science, in part because it opens the door to the whole notion of eugenics.
Eugenicists believe that the human species would advance more quickly if it discouraged reproduction among certain groups deemed unfit — including those that score poorly on aptitude tests.
Ironically, the SAT was designed by a psychology professor who became a leading member of the eugenics movement before denouncing it later in life.
The second argument was that SAT scores measure only the ability to take the SAT — a skill that, depending on the ability to pay, one could pick up in a coaching class (a growth industry that in 1999 alone raked in $400 million). Aside from that class inequality, the test’s failure to measure anything meaningful also meant that kids were spending a lot of time fretting over different tricks to remember at the expense of real learning.
Money is another big issue concerning the SAT. While not only paying the $47 to take the test, many students also prepare for the test by spending money on SAT prep classes.
The College Board says the average SAT taker spends 11 hours preparing and that coaching on average adds fewer than 40 points to a score. But test prep has become a big part of teen culture in most suburbs. Even the College Board sells its own test-prep material.
The Princeton Review’s $799-to-$899 SAT classes typically meet weekly for six weeks, and students are expected to practice analogies and memorize vocabulary at home.
“My family spent hundreds of dollars paying for SAT prep classes. The classes only gave me helpful tips on which questions to answer on the SAT, which I could have found online for free,” said senior Shannon Buckley.
Students have spent money, worked hard and committed long hours to succeed on the SAT. Is it worth all the time and money for an aptitude test that doesn’t always qualify a student?
If most admissions officers — both colleges and giant state schools — say they work hard not to put too much emphasis on the SAT, then do we really need it?
