WHILE everyone is harping on who does or doesn't deserve to be at the University, they're leaving something out. Students are purchasing SAT scores to get into top-flight universities.
Preparatory courses exacerbate cleavages of wealth in our society. Not everyone can afford the expensive programs, which in some cases cost in excess of $1,000. This is a great injustice for many college-bound students who cannot afford them. Some might say that gaps in wealth give extra opportunities to wealthy individuals anyway. That may be true, but it does not justify perpetuating the problem.
People from all socioeconomic backgrounds can benefit from SAT prep programs. Because not everyone can afford the courses, the College Board should place a survey question on the SAT inquiring as to whether or not a test-taker has taken prep classes for the SAT. From there the University can decide how to interpret it. It is ultimately up to the University to determine the nature of the competitive advantage.
Wealthier students already may have an educational advantage in the college admissions process. Compounded by the benefits offered by an SAT prep course, the wealthy student's lead on the less advantaged student becomes that much greater. That is why schools must be aware of how people prepare for the test, and who's getting the preparation.
This reaches across racial boundaries. On the whole, racial minorities still are at a deficit when it comes to per capita income. While the intent of the SAT and the prep courses are not to inflame social inequities, they only entrench the problem further.
But if someone wants to use his capital to buy intellectual property, who's to stop him? This is a very compelling point. It's also very flawed. There is an unavoidable "neighborhood effect" in the grading of the SATs. The SAT is a standardized test. That means it is graded in such a way that my grade affects your grade. The tests are scaled based on national data. If what you do has a negative impact on what I do, then mere property rights cannot justify the harms that I suffer -- especially if they jeopardize my shot at getting into a competitive university.
So what is the nature of these prep courses? They teach tricks. One common catchall is the technique of "back-solving," or using the answer choices in math problems to determine which one is correct. Herein lies the key problem. If the SAT is a test of reasoning, then one of two things should occur. I should discover these techniques independently so that my ability to reason is not misrepresented, or I should simply and directly reason out what it is that I'm doing.
It is not necessarily wrong for people to take these courses to raise their score. But not giving a university full disclosure of test preparation is unfair. Instead, people with more money are misrepresented, seeming to be superior to other competitors and not only because their inflated scores pull the national curve up, hurting those with lower scores. They are made to look more valuable to an institution of higher education.
Honesty is an issue. It's the same issue that Educational Testing Service (ETS) deals with when they handle cheating on the test. We operate on the presumption that all test-takers will be forthright -- and we exact justice retroactively if we find facts to the contrary.
With guarantees like 200 points or your money back, it's fair to say that an exchange is occurring -- money for credentials. This is troubling. Students are made to look more qualified on paper than they actually are and at the expense of others. If we're really looking for quality and diversity in our community, we should also look for imposters whose merits are embellished. Wealth and race aside, this advantage has a negative impact on all those who didn't take a prep course.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg is a first-year College student.)
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