As a grad student, I _attended_ (not an presenter, not a moderator, just a member of the public) a public symposium on reexamining university admissions processes including the (gasp) idea of eliminating or reducing the importance of SAT scores. A reporter from the school paper interviewed me about my thoughts and I said I was familiar with the issues and intrigued by the ideas raised.

The next week, a faculty member came up to me and asked if I had been the one interviewed in the paper. The faculty warned me if I wanted to successfully negotiate the Ph.D. program I ought not to delve into these matters. Besides, there is no other way to effectively screen tens of thousands of applicants without numerical scores. I asked if those scores don't correlate to student success, aptitude, or matriculation, then are they useful measures; the faculty retorted there is no better, fairer system.

The survival of the fittest model does does work in a manner. If this is what we as a society wants, then so be it. I have had thoughts for some kind of lottery system: define the _minimal_ scoring including SAT, GPA, sports skills, extracurriculars, etc. (We already score students for all these things--just define a _mininum_). Put all students meeting the _minimal_ criteria in the hopper and pick out the number of students to fill the slots available.

My late mentor, Harvard professor David McClelland, first proposed in 1973 that we should use "competencies" -- characteristics related directly to specific job performance -- instead of IQ for job selection. Competencies have since become the basis for a vast amount of work in the corporate world, including my own, and influenced people like Daniel Goleman (another McClelland student), but are almost entirely ignored for student selection.

In paralell, he also waged war generally against the overuse of the IQ tests and its cousins, particularly the SAT. McClelland would observe to me that the SAT only predicted one thing: freshman-year college grades. He tried to persuade Harvard for years to drop it, and they finally did -- after he retired. As a personality psychologist myself, who can score in the 99%th percentile on just about any typical test if desired, I am well aware of the weaknesses of the SAT, and see no reason to disagree with my mentor. The surface is slicker, but the core is just as rotten.

A long while ago, I had a girlfriend who took the SAT and scored 900. Her wealthy parents shelled out the cash for a SAT prep class, and she scored 1100 on the next go. So did she get any smarter in the few weeks it took her to take the prep class? Many times, the difference between the score of one student and another on the SAT, LSAT, etc. is the money spent. Is this how schools should be making their admissions decisions?

"...we are left to wonder if more schools should follow the route of the Universities of California and Texas, for example, and banish the SATs from the admissions process."

Unfortunately, the University of California still very much requires the SATs for admissions! And not just the SAT I, but the SAT II as well!!!!

As someone who spends a great deal of time working with college entrance exams, I find myself not so much amused as amazed by articles like these. The SAT and its cousin, the ACT are controversial because people insist on conflating all kinds of anxieties, societal issues, and misperceptions into the discussion.

What is so wrong with an objective, quantitative, nationally administered exam?

Student GPA, the primary factor in college admissions, is subjective. It is influenced by a host of non-academic factors. It's also nearly impossible to compare accurately across a wide range of high schools. I can assure you that an "A" was a lot tougher to come by at my old high school than at any of our local peers. Fortunately, our extremely high SAT average score helped put the competitiveness of our curriculum in context.

GPA and SAT/ACT scores go hand in hand in providing schools with recognizable quantitative data as a foundation for college admission choices. The application still asks for extracurriculars, essays, even interviews. But those two sets of numbers together offer a more accurate prediction of freshman year success than anything else. So can we put the wish-fulfillment fantasies aside and recognize the value of the SAT, rather than just reliving high school test anxiety over and over?

I'd also like to point out that the author seems to have misrepresented the policies of the Universities of California and Texas regarding the use of the SAT in admissions decisions. The UC system is in fact largely responsible for recent changes in the SAT. Their 2006 admissions policies read as follows:

"Instead of taking the ACT or SAT I plus three SAT IIs as they do now, students who enter the University in 2006 will take a new SAT I that includes a writing exam or the ACT along with a new writing component, plus two SAT IIs in areas such as history/social science, English, mathematics, laboratory science, or a language other than English."

Some of us who had scores well within the 1500 range STILL got rejected from many colleges. Even with 10 4s and 5s on APs, a 3.8 GPA, a part-time job after school, and positions of student leadership. So...apparently plenty of places are looking at something other than SAT scores (and possibly other than GPA, leadership, and work ethic too). So what worries me is to have students assume that a good SAT score will guarantee you a spot at the top: it doesn't. I guess you never know exactly what will make or break your application. I'm sure clueless. So ultimately the message is that you have to do EVERYTHING right, preferably have some connections or interesting heritage, and still it's a craps shoot. The SAT is something I personally oppose, but the whole process seems so opaque that I'd hate to give the SAT the most of my scrutiny. Why doesn't the author study THAT group of students, who had truly high scores but still had a stack of rejections? I ended up really happy, and now I'm a funded grad student. So I guess the SAT scores predicted my academic happiness and success (at the top-five Liberal Arts college who took a "chance" on someone like me, and now in grad school), but not at all my college acceptance list.