“What would be the harm in doing away with the S.A.T.?”
Kim Fassler, who writes the Quarterlife Cafe blog for the Honolulu Advertiser, posted an article on July 10th called Demise of the Evil S.A.T.? in which she asked and answered that question. A few colleges are making the SAT optional for undergraduate applicants, including Wake Forest. See this New York Times blog post called The Growing Backlash Against the SAT.
Speaking as a faculty member, we need standardized testing in the admissions process. It’s difficult to compare high school GPAs, as they can vary widely or similar students, even within a school district.
Standardized tests like the SAT can help students who perform better on an exam than they do in the classroom. The SAT is only one factor in most admissions decisions, after all.
Kim also mentioned another major reason for standardized testing. It is a sieve in the admissions process. Without standardized tests, university admissions officers might be flooded with applications from marginal students who are willing to pay their application fee and take their chances.
It’s not supposed to be easy to get into a university.Student should comepte for a spot, because they’ll be competing to enter specific programs and graduate with their degree.
Back in 2000, I wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times about high school graduation requirements, which were very strict 100 years ago. See my published letter called Standardized Students: Protesting a Test.
We need graduate admissions exams, too
Kim hasn’t delivered on her promised column about the GRE, but most of what I’ve written above applies to graduate and professional school entrance exams, including the GMAT, LSAT and MCAT. It’s interesting that the GMAT will try a biometric identification method in 450 VUE testing centers in South Korea and India. I’m assuming that cheating has been an issue for the GMAT in those countries.
The GMAT exam is used in the MBA admissions process at many universities, and has a more focused approach than the GRE. I took it myself in October 1985. Of course, the exam didn’t cost US$250 back then.
This Wall Street Journal article by John Hechinger called Business Schools Try Palm Scans To Finger Cheats has more details and a good graphic of palm vein scanning, which captures more data than a fingerprint scan.
The SAT doesn’t use biometrics yet, probably because there are many more test-takers each year than for the graduate exams. ETS claims that the cheating rate on the SAT is 0.1%, which seems like an underestimate to me.
The LSAT uses paper copies of fingerprints, which are discarded after 5 years.
Images courtesy of jackhynes and sonicbloom through a Creative Commons license.
