Baylor Trying to Game U.S. News Rankings by Paying Freshmen to Retake SATs?
Monday, October 20, 2008
The New York Times recently published a story about Baylor University paying incoming freshmen $300 to retake the SAT and awarding them a $1,000 merit scholarship if they raised their SAT score 50 points. Just to clarify, Baylor paid students who were already admitted to the school $300 to retake the SAT.
Why Was Baylor Paying Admitted Students to Retake the SAT?
While the university claimed that much of the motivation for letting incoming freshmen retake the SAT was to award additional merit aid (that is, the $1,000 merit scholarship if they raised their score 50 points), the tactics seem a little fishy. The initiative appears to be a veiled attempt to improve the school's standing in popular college ranking guides.
First, the offer was only open to incoming freshmen. No upperclassmen were offered the opportunity to do the same. Why is that significant? Well, because the test scores of upperclassmen have already been reported to organizations like U.S. News and World Report and Princeton Review in past years and won't have any affect on the school's current rankings.
Second, it was not as though they had pre-defined standards for merit aid and were encouraging students who fell just short of those standards to retake the SAT so they could qualify. That might seem compassionate, in some way, letting a kid who scored an 1220 on the SAT and fell just short of a 1250 cut-off for a scholarship give it another try. You could qualify for the merit aid whether you had a 1000 SAT score or a 1300 SAT score.
Finally, if it was mostly about giving out additional merit aid, aren't there better ways to give out scholarships rather than making a freshman retake the SAT? One quick idea could be to tie the merit scholarship to community service.
The Results of Paying Students and the Criticism that Followed
The program cost the school a reported $862,000, and the average SAT score of incoming freshmen climbed just 10 points from 1200 to 1210. When the news broke in the university's student newspaper, The Lariat, the school received criticism from all quarters of the university. The newspaper released a highly critical op-ed piece, the faculty senate condemned the practice, and many students on campus derided it as unfair and out of line with Baylor's institutional values. Criticism also came from the admission professionals around the country.
Baylor Stops the Program
In response to the mounting criticism, Baylor has stopped the program. It's unclear whether it was initially intended to be a one-year program or an ongoing offer to incoming freshmen.
The whole affair has stoked the fires for critics of published rankings and for critics of standardized tests.
Labels: admissions, college, SAT, U.S. News
Are the SATs Days Numbered?
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
A panel of admission experts, assembled by the National Association of College Admission Counselors (NACAC) and led by William Fitzsimmons, dean of admission and financial aid at Harvard, recently put out a report that raises questions about the use of SAT and ACT in college admissions decisions. The panel asked colleges to look critically at the correlation between SAT and ACT scores and performance in actual college classes and decide whether the use of these standardized admissions tests is appropriate.
So What Does This Mean?
Many colleges have already started a shift toward test optional policies, meaning students can submit SAT or ACT scores if they like, but are not required to do so. According to FairTest.org, the number of colleges and universities that have some form of test optional policy now approaches 800. This trend seems likely to continue. However, it's unlikely that college-bound students will be able to completely ignore the SAT and ACT any time soon.
If you're a high school or middle school student, you may not want to get too excited. The report does not advocate eliminating testing altogether. It proposes the consideration of alternative tests that are more curriculum-based, meaning they would test what you actually learn in high school. Some examples of curriculum-based tests are AP Exams and SAT Subject Tests. According to the report, these tests tend to be better predictors of success in college classrooms than the ACT and SAT.
The Test Prep Industry
The panel also pointed to the entire industry that has sprung up around test preparation for the ACT and SAT as an unfair advantage for some and an unnecessary distraction from actual learning. Not everyone can afford an SAT Prep Class from Kaplan or Princeton Review. Additionally, the panel believed that curriculum-based tests would send "a message to students that studying their course material in high school, not taking extracurricular test prep courses that tend to focus on test-taking skills, is the way to do well on admission tests and succeed in a rigorous college curriculum."
My guess is that the test prep industry would adapt their methods to the new curriculum-based tests. They may not be as easily "gamed", but there will likely be places where test prep will allow for improvement of scores. For example, the MCAT is largely based on specific subject matter and plenty of organizations offer test prep for it, including Kaplan and Princeton Review.
Labels: ACT, admissions, college, SAT, Test Prep
High School Students Will Be Able to Choose Which SAT Scores Colleges Receive
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The College Board just announced a change in its score reporting policy. In the past, a school received all of a student's SAT Scores. If you took the test 3 times, a college received all 3 scores. The new policy will allow test takers to select which SAT scores a college receives.
Reduced Stress from Taking the SAT
The shift in policy was intended to "reduce student stress and improve the test-day experience", according to the College Board. With the new policy, you would know going in that if you screwed up royally on the SAT, you could always take it again and the college would never see your poor score.
Is the New SAT Policy Unfair?
Some people worry that this new policy may help higher-income families disproportionately. They have the money to cover the cost of the multiple SAT exams. If you could afford to, you could keep on taking the SAT until you got a score that you liked and only show that score to colleges.
More about the New SAT Score Reporting Policy
The policy does not kick in until the March 2009 test date. However, once it's in effect, it will apply retroactively, meaning you could choose to send your March 2009 score to a school and not your November 2008 score (even though the November 2008 test date was before the start date of the policy).
The new score reporting policy is "opt-in". You will need to actively choose this score reporting option or all of your test scores will be sent to colleges and universities.
Labels: college, SAT, Test