SAT scores are coming out soon (or have already been released, depending upon when you read this). This brings thoughts of the future to millions of American high school students. Nervous feelings, excitement, expectation, even dread may color the pallet of days. What will the score mean for their college and career prospects? Does a high score ensure success in life? Does it make it easier to obtain a cash advance? Do all colleges still care about SAT scores?

No.

Jeremy Rodriguez reports for Carnegie Mellon’s The Tartan Online that an increasing number of colleges are ready to consider SAT scores optional in the admissions process.

Change the game

Thomas Espenshade and Chang Young Chung, a sociology professor and statistical programmer from Princeton University, have conducted a study that found that “dropping standardized test scores as an admissions requirement will lead to increased percentages of minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students admitted to college.”

Clearly, it’s a story we’ve heard before, at least anecdotally. In the modeling for the study, researchers assumed that at the SAT-optional colleges, those with high scores would still apply there and receive the benefits of their scores. There are no advantage for high SAT scores at institutions that don’t use the scores in the admissions process.

Hooray for handouts

In the SAT-optional model, private colleges where applying black students with a mean SAT score of 1405, the percentage of admitted applicants who are black would increase by three percent. In an environment where the SAT was not considered at all, the percentage of accepted students goes up almost six percent. For Latino students, the numbers are three and four percent.

“There should be some correlation between the test and performance,” said Gordon Weinber, a Carnegie Mellon statistics professor. The correlation is not perfect, but certainly not zero. As we have seen with the recent election, when intelligence and reason are applied, what has been previously called affirmative action could be a good thing.”

Spat on the SAT

Some take a more Darwinian view of the college admission process and feel that the playing field should not be changed to aid those given fewer advantages.

“Someone underqualified should not take the place of someone more qualified [at a university],” said Sean Lawley, a senior mathematics major and teaching assistant. “Race should not affect admissions at all; the finite resources for research and learning should be put forth to the best students in those schools. They should consider the best means to evaluate talent and use that.”

Is the SAT an effective tool? Should it be held over teenagers’ heads like the sword of Damocles? Should you eat mayonnaise-based foods that have been sitting out overnight? Just say no.

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