SUPERMARKETS sell different grades of eggs. Before they are shipped out to Giant, Safeway or Harris Teeter, they are inspected by the all-knowing egg inspector and given anywhere from one to three "As." This ensures that we consumers will know what quality we're paying for. If we choose to invest the extra change for the classier, triple-A eggs, we know that we're getting a superior product. In the same way, standardized testing ensures that a college or university knows approximately what quality of students it's investing in.
More and more colleges and universities are deciding to drop standardized test scores from their admissions processes. The University of Notre Dame's The Observer reported that so far, 285 accredited American colleges and universities have nixed the standardized test requirement ("Some colleges drop SAT requirement," Sept. 15). They no longer care what comes of the three stressful hours that millions of high school juniors and seniors spend on Saturday morning. They should.
All high schools are different, and no two applicants possibly can have the same background and experiences. Grade point averages change from school to school, and not all educational systems offer advanced placement or honors courses. The only information that can help colleges compare students fairly is a standardized test like the SAT or ACT.
These tests not only provide a common comparison of varied students, but also help predict how a student will do in his first year of college. Study after study has proven that there's a high positive correlation between SAT scores and first-year grade point averages. Bob Mundy, director of internal operations at the University of Notre Dame, found that in a study of 200 students who scored above a 1500 on the SATs and 200 others who scored between 1200 and 1500, the majority of GPAs above a 3.8 came from the 1500 group.
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Dickinson College in Pennsylvania has made reporting standardized test scores optional for six years now. As a result, their admissions process went from "highly competitive" to "less competitive." Only now, after five years of finding other ways to seem more competitive, have they returned to the ranks of the highly competitive.
Making standardized test reports optional is even more pointless than dropping them all together. If given the option, only those students who scored high on the SATs or ACT would even bother to turn them in. Kristy Leach, associate director of admissions at Dickinson College, says, "We've always seen those 'A' students in high school who have test anxiety and don't test well. Had we had their SAT score and only being in the 900s, it would have probably jeopardized the decision." That's because they had it easy getting As, not test anxiety that was so bad as to make them score so poorly. Besides, students are allowed to take the SAT as many times as they want to, so the anxiety should go away after the fifth time filling in all those bubbles.
Large schools like the University especially need applicants to report their test scores. There is no easy substitute to simple numbers on a score report. Admissions officers can't read 15,000 alternative assessments in time to make their decisions. But small schools still shouldn't drop the only objective standard of student comparison. When approached with this subject, Dean of Admissions John A. Blackburn responded, "I think that schools which drop standardized test requirements for admission are giving up an important piece of information ... ." These tests have been around for a long time and have proven for the most part to be successful factors in the admissions process.
Standardized tests truly are important to any university applications process, but they are by no means the only aspects of a student's high school career to be weighed. It's important to also look at grades, essays, background and many other factors that don't show up in a 1600 point range. Blackburn agrees, "Although decisions are made on the basis of a whole range of factors, the SAT can be helpful in many of those decisions." The University does weigh many factors, but just as a consumer can't go about blindly buying eggs, an admissions office can't tell what quality of student they are investing in unless they have some basis for comparison.
(Brandon Almond is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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