The New SAT Score Policy: Tiny Loophole, Big Shock?

Your right Kassi! Its horribly mean for collegs to only accept those who are berst qualified. Obama shoudl pass legislation forcing colleges to admit students they feel sorry for, not those who are capable of completing their programs.

For the record frees study guides exist. I prepared by taking a FREE library class, reading prep books I borrowed from my FREE local library, and subscribing to the FREE SAT question of the day at Collgeboard.com, and that the most rigorous courses available at my PUBLIC high school.
I scored at 1510/1600, and 2160/2400.
Perhaps we need a government agency to help 'disadvantaged' students access these resources

Abolish the SAT. Its sole purpose is to restrict opportunity based on prior learning often restricted by family background and expectations, and to reinforce privilege for those who can afford SAT coaching and test prep (I realize scholarships exist, but in reality middle and upper income kids populate these classes). No one should be denied opportunity based on perceived "aptitude," just give them the chance and see if they make it.

Abolish the SAT!

RANDOM GIRL

You need to learn to spell COLLEGE before you apply to go there !!

im still in high school, and this looks great to me in some ways, but just by ignoring the fact that I might get bad scores on some tests doesnt make them just go away. i think that it is our american right to choose, and i will not judge anyone and say it is wrong or right for them, because everyone is different, and its just not my place. my feelings on this matter, however, are of disgust. people are talking about making it easier to get into collage when that's not the problem most sutdents face today. its money. its staying in collage! student loans don't help, and our collages dont help. my opinion then, on this matter, is that its our american right and each should decide for his own and let God and his conscience be his guide.

Fabulous no ones going to be able to get into college unless they are smart. Great thinking people.

The issue here is not that students can suppress harmful scores, but rather that people are still acting under the erroneous assumption that the SAT is an accurate measure of a student's abilities, when in fact, the original intent of the exam was to "prove" the intellectual superiority of WASP youths. Because the test was developed at the request of "elite"--which is to say, private--universities, these institutions were able to select for race, income, and socioeconomic status under the guise of merit. The SAT, at its best, still only provides 13% explained variance; when we account for parents' education, family SES, race, gender, etc. the SAT is reduced to white noise. Universities across the nation should follow the example of Wake Forest University (a tier 1 university, according to Barron's) and cease to require the SAT as part of the admissions process.

The problem with the SAT is it purports to predict how successful one will be in higher education. What it really accomplishes is indicating who is skilled at taking standardized tests and who isn???t.
I know two national merit scholars who flunked out freshman year. My own sister scored higher than I did, and graduated with barely a C average. I graduated with honors.
Another problem pointed out by a fellow reader is that outside factors on the day you take the test can have a huge impact. I slogged through both the SAT and the ACT. I didn???t eat breakfast on the day I took my SAT because I was running very, very late. The result? A huge discrepancy in my scores. When I went to enroll in my freshman courses, my ACT scores qualified me to skip Freshman English while my SAT score did not. The enrollment person had no idea what to do with me because the two tests indicated two different ???aptitudes.??? Thankfully, the problem was resolved when I pointed out my score on an AP English exam.
Finally, I would just like to note that I believe we rely too heavily on standardized exams. If I count all the tests I???ve taken to earn my teaching certificate, plus the tests I took to get into college and the tests I took to skip certain college credits (optional, I grant you), not to mention all the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and the like I took throughout my K-12 education, I???ve taken well over 20 standardized exams in my short existence. Bear in mind this is all BEFORE No Child Left Behind. Last year third graders at my school took seven standardized tests. Seven! In a single school year! Imagine how long their list will be when they are my age!

Don't understand the difficulty...don't all kids by this time understand that there is no such thing as privacy. Anything you do or say can ultimately jump up and bite you, so you would think they would just get on with their life and deal with it.

"Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT, referred to "less kids taking SAT,"

uh' don't you mean fewer kids Laurence - what's the matter, never took your own test.

Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT, referred to "less kids taking SAT,"

uh' don't you mean fewer kids Laurence - what's the matter never took your own test?

PS as many have mentioned, the fact that you can "study" for what purports to be an "aptitude" test is absurd...my prior comment assumed you were taking the test 'cold' just not with one.

The entire SAT system is silly, and if anything allowing a "best of" approach to cherry-picking scores introduces some semblance of rationality by diminishing the importance of at least one fundamentally flawed variable -- the day you take the test. In my own case (a long time ago in a galaxy far far away) I started off with a high IQ (143), Otis Lennon and other standard test scores in the 99th percentile, and very high school entrance and PSAT scores. Unfortunately the day of the SAT (and back then it was "the day") I had a horrendous cold and slept about three hours. This translated into a score not of the predicted range of top tenth, but in the absolute middle. I needed to explain that score at least three times, including to the admissions director of a first-tier university who was having trouble believing someone as "supposedly" capable as myself could have that score. I asked, basically, whether he thought someone as supposedly capable as myself could have a brutal cold that might impact one brain day in a life of then 19 or 20 yrs. Testing for raw intelligence makes some sense. Testing for specific "aptitude" and using it as a key criterion for college admissions is foolishness.

Short of eliminating the SATs or entirely restructuring the commodity-oriented approach to higher education, there will always be test anxiety. Adding the 3rd (writing) segment sounds great in theory, but only prolongs the already exhausting exam period. So this isn't about helping students. This is about making more money for ETS. If students feel they didn't do well enough AND can hide their "low" scores, students and parents then feel pressured to shell out another $90(?) for another grueling 4-6 hour exam. It privileges the rich kids who already had access to prep courses. And the ETS makes plenty of money, charging to send score reports. And let's not even start on GRE!

You know, maybe my parents and I were naive, but in the 70's I was not aware of SAT review courses, nor did I know that you could take the test more than once. I don't think colleges should weigh SAT scores as heavily as GPA and class rank (and the high school itself). Some kids cannot afford expensive SAT courses. Some have the time to put forth the effort the courses recommend, other kids might have jobs. Some smart kids may never receive guidance as to the test-taking strategies for the SAT's. Any college that puts too much empathsis on SAT scores is doing itself a disservice and kids would be better off not going to them.

After all that I make my own grammatical error: students --> students'