SAT Optional Policy
Introduction:
Serving as a strategy to improve the equality of college access and the selectivity, SAT optional policy has been accepted by more than 850 colleges and universities among the U.S. (College Board, 2015). Although rigorous studies have demonstrated that SAT/ACT optional policy has successfully achieved these two goals (Coleman, 2011; Epstein, 2009), the comprehensive impacts of SAT Optional can be complex. This literature review shows the story of SAT Optional and the logic behind this policy, aiming at exploring the impacts of SAT Optional on both applicants and institutions. This paper is mainly constituted by four parts:
• Criticisms of SAT and the logic of SAT Optional policy;
• The impacts of SAT Optional …show more content…
on students and institutions;
• The threat of SAT/ACT Optional Policy and possible solutions;
• Discussion and implication
The Criticisms of SAT & SAT optional policy The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was introduced in 1926, serving as an effective measure of intellect. Since 1935, when Harvard University asked all incoming students to submit their SAT scores, many universities followed Harvard and made the SAT test required for any students to be considered for admission. Currently, more than two million students from about 2000 high schools take the SAT annually, with a large number of students taking the SAT more than once to get satisfactory scores (Lewin, 2013). After releasing the first college ranking in 1983, U.S News & World Report gradually has important influence on students’ college choice. As a nature response, institutions began to design strategies to improve their rankings to survive and compete. Since SAT scores are well addressed by U.S News and high scores are considered as dominant signals of educational excellent, institutions are prefer to admit students with higher SAT scores (Epstein, 2009). The average SAT scores are highly related to institution’s selectivity, and the preference of high SAT scores drives student work hard in SAT preparation. In spite of such popularity of SAT, from 1980s, there has been a heating debate on the exam’s validity and reliability. Today, people criticize that SAT inhibit the college access than applaud it for opening doors in the first place. The main criticisms focus on three areas. First, SAT scores are very sensitive to students’ economic backgrounds. One possibility is that socio-economic advantages translate into school-level inequalities in, for example, classroom resources, teacher experience and segregation (Buchmann, etc., 2010). The SAT was created as a test to equalize opportunity for all students, yet now serves as a test that works in favor of the privileged (Amo & Lee, 2013). Unlike achievement tests, SAT is designed to predict a student’s potential in college learning. However, research has shown that students can be trained to perform well in this exam. Students from high-income families are willing to, and capable of getting additional training beyond what is often offered in a standard package in most high schools, private or not. Such “shadow education” – education activities outside of formal schooling – often make it easier for students from rich families to achieve higher scores in SAT than their peers. One related fact is that SAT training has been a big industry in the U.S. For example, one of the main players in the industry, Princeton Review, garnered $110.4 million in revenue for its test preparation services in 2009 (Claudia & Dennis, 2010). In stark contrast, students from low-income families often do not have the equivalent resources to prepare for the exam outside class. Besides, students may take exam more than once since the College Board implemented the “Score Choice” policy in 2009 that allow students to choose how many and which scores to send to colleges. This is a good strategies to improve the SAT scores, however, this strategy is not an affordable idea for students from low-income families (Buchmann, etc, 2010). Therefore, social class inequalities in SAT preparation are notable and have at least moderate consequences for SAT scores and college enrollment. Second, SAT scores fails to reflect students’ overall qualities because it just provides limited information concerning the future academic ability of college applicants. Ronald (2011) suggests that SAT can be vastly different, depending on the type of intelligence one possessed. In particular, there exist at least 8 forms of intelligence (Howard Garner, 2004), but SAT just tests two of them: linguistic and logical mathematical intelligence. As a result of such a deficiency in its ability to test a variety of skill sets, SAT may lead to social stratification and inequality because the test tends to be biased toward students who are good at these two abilities. While it is unrealistic to require an exam to test every skill set that one may possess, it is also unjust that students are evaluated by such a limited set of abilities. Third, people criticize that SAT is not a powerful predictor of student college performance, such as the college GPA. A study conducted in 2001 by the College Board performed a secondary analysis of studies on the correlation between SAT scores and cumulative college grade point average, and results showed that the average correlation among the studies analyzed was 0.36 (Burto and Ramist, 2001). Although it is a substantial correlation, much of the variance in students’ college GPA is still unaccounted for. In contract, other indexes, such as high school’s GPA, class rank, or the difficulty of high school curriculum may be more useful for institutions to predict a student’s college academic performance. Several research claims that high school’s GPA and class rank are more reliable to predict a student’s college academic performance, especially the first year’s GPA (Buchmann, etc, 2010; Schaffner, 2012). Based on above criticisms, universities and colleges began to put less weight on SAT scores in admission process. Bates College is one of the pioneers of SAT optional school among selective liberal art schools. It began internal discussion about its test requirement in 1979, and several years’ self study made Bates conclude that the relationship between students SAT scores and their college performance was unclear (Epstein, 2009). Currently, over 850 colleges and universities accept the SAT/ACT optional policy, which means students can decide whether to submit their SAT scores or not. Although most of these universities are moderately selective or less selective ones, some very selective universities and top liberal arts universities also made this policy recently years. Many of the prestigious schools that have dropped the SAT/ACT requirement are small liberal arts colleges such as Hamilton, Bowdoin, Hampshire, Middlebury, Bard, Mount Holyoke, Bates, Connecticut College, and the College of the Holy Cross. Besides, a few of selective national universities also adopt the SAT optional policy. For example, from 2010, New York University has allowed students to submit three non-language Advanced Placement (AP) test scores or three non-language SAT II subject test scores instead of the SAT. People worries that adopting SAT optional policies might dramatically increase the cost of institutions, since they have to review much more applications and some schools even have to organize much more interviews to students who refused to submit their scores. However, colleges might be able to enjoy the benefits of the SAT/ACT optional system without being heavily penalized in terms of admissions statistics and student quality. In fact, many students still choose to submit their SAT scores, and SAT is still a useful tool for SAT optional colleges.
The impacts of SAT Optional on students and institutions The release of the new SAT in 2005, which increased an essay part as the response of public criticisms, disappointed the public again, and there was a dramatically increasing number of schools announced that they adopt the SAT Optional.
The trend of the adoption of SAT Optional might have complex and unpredicted influences on students, institutions, exam industry and even the whole society. Official saying suggests that SAT/ACT optional policies would likely better serve traditionally underprivileged students. Although it’s still impossible to accurately evaluate the effects of SAT/ACT optional policies, it is widely accepted that SAT/ACT optional policy can lead the change of application pool and influence the college admission decision. Soares (2011) found that test-optional policies result in increased student diversity and encourage greater emphasis on the rigor of the high school curriculum and alternative measurements of …show more content…
ability. SAT/ACT optional was supposed to provide minority students, such as low-income students and students of colors, who are unable to equally get as high SAT scores as their peers, a higher chance to gain acceptance to their desired schools. For example, Wake Forest is the first university ranked in the top 30 national research institutions to have adopted the SAT/ACT optional policy. University admissions officials said that one reason for dropping the SAT is to encourage more black and minority applicants. Wake Forest provost Jill Tiefenthaler (2008) stated, "Reliance on the SAT and other standardized tests for admission is a major barrier to access for many worthy students. By taking this step at Wake Forest, we want to remove that barrier." The results demonstrated that Wake Forest has successfully achieved their goal in admitting more diverse student population. Prior research has shown how SAT optional policy influences the application pool and individual choices. For example, Bates College, a private liberal arts institution with a total undergraduate enrollment of 1753 and ranked 22 of National Liberal Arts Colleges by US News, nearly doubled its applicant pool since it stopped requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. Test optional policy at Bates increased application rate from women, minority students, low-income students, international applicants, and students with learning disabilities. Among applications’ individual decisions, 49% of Hispanic applicants and 45% of black applicants did not submit test cores, while 30% of white students opted not to do so (Hoover, 2014). However, few research explored the relationship between SAT Optional and school’s ranking. Started from 1980s, U.S News gradually became a popular way to judge colleges’ quality and a powerful factor that can influence students school choices. Currently, U.S News ranks national universities, liberal arts universities, regional universities, and it also provides several special rankings, such as the best value schools’ ranking. Although distinct in specific criteria, most types of rankings address some common indicators, including but not limited to graduation rate, retention rate, faculty resource, financial aids, reputation, selectivity, admission test scores and alumni giving. Previous studies have shown that US News and World Report’s rankings can significantly influence students’ matriculation decisions, especially for high-ability students. Griggith and Task (2005) used a Colgate University Admitted Student Questionnaire to estimate the influence of changes in a school’s USNWR rank on the probability of matriculation. Results shows that student school choice is sensitive to changes in rank, and the sensitivity to rank declines at lower ranks. There results suggest that it’s rational for college to pay attention to their USNWR rank because it’s an important factor in yielding accepted students. Although previous studies haven’t explored the relationship between SAT optional policy and the school’s ranking, there are several types of hypothesis.
From a positive perspective, eliminating the requirement of SAT, SAT Optional policy might help schools receive more applications. Since most schools admit a stable number of students each year, more applications mean that schools can reject more students and their rejection rate will increase, which indicates the increasing of selectivity. Besides, SAT optional policy allows students to choose submitting their scores or not, therefore, students who choose to submit their SAT scores are usually confident with their scores, suggesting that the average SAT scores school received would increase after adopting the SAT optional. The improvement of test scores and selectivity might contribute to the increasing of college
ranking. However, on the other hand, SAT is one of the most effective predictors of student academic performance, and it has been used for a while as an admission requirement. SAT Optional policy might admit students unqualified students, and it can be harmful to its graduation rate and graduate annual income. Since graduation and retention rates play larger roles than selectivity in ranking system, SAT optional might have negative influence on college ranking. For example, some selective liberal arts schools’ graduation rates and ranking, such as Mount Holyoke, Bates and Connecticut College, decreased moderately after adopting SAT Optional for more than four years (U.S News, 2001-2012). However, there is no study explained whether this relationship caused by coincident, or it’s significant. More studies are needed to explore the impacts of adopting SAT optional on college rankings.
Serving as a strategy to improve the equality of college access and the selectivity, SAT optional policy has been accepted by more than 850 colleges and universities among the U.S. (College Board, 2015). Although rigorous studies have demonstrated that SAT/ACT optional policy has successfully achieved these two goals (Coleman, 2011; Epstein, 2009), the comprehensive impacts of SAT Optional can be complex. This literature review shows the story of SAT Optional and the logic behind this policy, aiming at exploring the impacts of SAT Optional on both applicants and institutions. This paper is mainly constituted by four parts:
• Criticisms of SAT and the logic of SAT Optional policy;
• The impacts of SAT Optional …show more content…
on students and institutions;
• The threat of SAT/ACT Optional Policy and possible solutions;
• Discussion and implication
The Criticisms of SAT & SAT optional policy The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was introduced in 1926, serving as an effective measure of intellect. Since 1935, when Harvard University asked all incoming students to submit their SAT scores, many universities followed Harvard and made the SAT test required for any students to be considered for admission. Currently, more than two million students from about 2000 high schools take the SAT annually, with a large number of students taking the SAT more than once to get satisfactory scores (Lewin, 2013). After releasing the first college ranking in 1983, U.S News & World Report gradually has important influence on students’ college choice. As a nature response, institutions began to design strategies to improve their rankings to survive and compete. Since SAT scores are well addressed by U.S News and high scores are considered as dominant signals of educational excellent, institutions are prefer to admit students with higher SAT scores (Epstein, 2009). The average SAT scores are highly related to institution’s selectivity, and the preference of high SAT scores drives student work hard in SAT preparation. In spite of such popularity of SAT, from 1980s, there has been a heating debate on the exam’s validity and reliability. Today, people criticize that SAT inhibit the college access than applaud it for opening doors in the first place. The main criticisms focus on three areas. First, SAT scores are very sensitive to students’ economic backgrounds. One possibility is that socio-economic advantages translate into school-level inequalities in, for example, classroom resources, teacher experience and segregation (Buchmann, etc., 2010). The SAT was created as a test to equalize opportunity for all students, yet now serves as a test that works in favor of the privileged (Amo & Lee, 2013). Unlike achievement tests, SAT is designed to predict a student’s potential in college learning. However, research has shown that students can be trained to perform well in this exam. Students from high-income families are willing to, and capable of getting additional training beyond what is often offered in a standard package in most high schools, private or not. Such “shadow education” – education activities outside of formal schooling – often make it easier for students from rich families to achieve higher scores in SAT than their peers. One related fact is that SAT training has been a big industry in the U.S. For example, one of the main players in the industry, Princeton Review, garnered $110.4 million in revenue for its test preparation services in 2009 (Claudia & Dennis, 2010). In stark contrast, students from low-income families often do not have the equivalent resources to prepare for the exam outside class. Besides, students may take exam more than once since the College Board implemented the “Score Choice” policy in 2009 that allow students to choose how many and which scores to send to colleges. This is a good strategies to improve the SAT scores, however, this strategy is not an affordable idea for students from low-income families (Buchmann, etc, 2010). Therefore, social class inequalities in SAT preparation are notable and have at least moderate consequences for SAT scores and college enrollment. Second, SAT scores fails to reflect students’ overall qualities because it just provides limited information concerning the future academic ability of college applicants. Ronald (2011) suggests that SAT can be vastly different, depending on the type of intelligence one possessed. In particular, there exist at least 8 forms of intelligence (Howard Garner, 2004), but SAT just tests two of them: linguistic and logical mathematical intelligence. As a result of such a deficiency in its ability to test a variety of skill sets, SAT may lead to social stratification and inequality because the test tends to be biased toward students who are good at these two abilities. While it is unrealistic to require an exam to test every skill set that one may possess, it is also unjust that students are evaluated by such a limited set of abilities. Third, people criticize that SAT is not a powerful predictor of student college performance, such as the college GPA. A study conducted in 2001 by the College Board performed a secondary analysis of studies on the correlation between SAT scores and cumulative college grade point average, and results showed that the average correlation among the studies analyzed was 0.36 (Burto and Ramist, 2001). Although it is a substantial correlation, much of the variance in students’ college GPA is still unaccounted for. In contract, other indexes, such as high school’s GPA, class rank, or the difficulty of high school curriculum may be more useful for institutions to predict a student’s college academic performance. Several research claims that high school’s GPA and class rank are more reliable to predict a student’s college academic performance, especially the first year’s GPA (Buchmann, etc, 2010; Schaffner, 2012). Based on above criticisms, universities and colleges began to put less weight on SAT scores in admission process. Bates College is one of the pioneers of SAT optional school among selective liberal art schools. It began internal discussion about its test requirement in 1979, and several years’ self study made Bates conclude that the relationship between students SAT scores and their college performance was unclear (Epstein, 2009). Currently, over 850 colleges and universities accept the SAT/ACT optional policy, which means students can decide whether to submit their SAT scores or not. Although most of these universities are moderately selective or less selective ones, some very selective universities and top liberal arts universities also made this policy recently years. Many of the prestigious schools that have dropped the SAT/ACT requirement are small liberal arts colleges such as Hamilton, Bowdoin, Hampshire, Middlebury, Bard, Mount Holyoke, Bates, Connecticut College, and the College of the Holy Cross. Besides, a few of selective national universities also adopt the SAT optional policy. For example, from 2010, New York University has allowed students to submit three non-language Advanced Placement (AP) test scores or three non-language SAT II subject test scores instead of the SAT. People worries that adopting SAT optional policies might dramatically increase the cost of institutions, since they have to review much more applications and some schools even have to organize much more interviews to students who refused to submit their scores. However, colleges might be able to enjoy the benefits of the SAT/ACT optional system without being heavily penalized in terms of admissions statistics and student quality. In fact, many students still choose to submit their SAT scores, and SAT is still a useful tool for SAT optional colleges.
The impacts of SAT Optional on students and institutions The release of the new SAT in 2005, which increased an essay part as the response of public criticisms, disappointed the public again, and there was a dramatically increasing number of schools announced that they adopt the SAT Optional.
The trend of the adoption of SAT Optional might have complex and unpredicted influences on students, institutions, exam industry and even the whole society. Official saying suggests that SAT/ACT optional policies would likely better serve traditionally underprivileged students. Although it’s still impossible to accurately evaluate the effects of SAT/ACT optional policies, it is widely accepted that SAT/ACT optional policy can lead the change of application pool and influence the college admission decision. Soares (2011) found that test-optional policies result in increased student diversity and encourage greater emphasis on the rigor of the high school curriculum and alternative measurements of …show more content…
ability. SAT/ACT optional was supposed to provide minority students, such as low-income students and students of colors, who are unable to equally get as high SAT scores as their peers, a higher chance to gain acceptance to their desired schools. For example, Wake Forest is the first university ranked in the top 30 national research institutions to have adopted the SAT/ACT optional policy. University admissions officials said that one reason for dropping the SAT is to encourage more black and minority applicants. Wake Forest provost Jill Tiefenthaler (2008) stated, "Reliance on the SAT and other standardized tests for admission is a major barrier to access for many worthy students. By taking this step at Wake Forest, we want to remove that barrier." The results demonstrated that Wake Forest has successfully achieved their goal in admitting more diverse student population. Prior research has shown how SAT optional policy influences the application pool and individual choices. For example, Bates College, a private liberal arts institution with a total undergraduate enrollment of 1753 and ranked 22 of National Liberal Arts Colleges by US News, nearly doubled its applicant pool since it stopped requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. Test optional policy at Bates increased application rate from women, minority students, low-income students, international applicants, and students with learning disabilities. Among applications’ individual decisions, 49% of Hispanic applicants and 45% of black applicants did not submit test cores, while 30% of white students opted not to do so (Hoover, 2014). However, few research explored the relationship between SAT Optional and school’s ranking. Started from 1980s, U.S News gradually became a popular way to judge colleges’ quality and a powerful factor that can influence students school choices. Currently, U.S News ranks national universities, liberal arts universities, regional universities, and it also provides several special rankings, such as the best value schools’ ranking. Although distinct in specific criteria, most types of rankings address some common indicators, including but not limited to graduation rate, retention rate, faculty resource, financial aids, reputation, selectivity, admission test scores and alumni giving. Previous studies have shown that US News and World Report’s rankings can significantly influence students’ matriculation decisions, especially for high-ability students. Griggith and Task (2005) used a Colgate University Admitted Student Questionnaire to estimate the influence of changes in a school’s USNWR rank on the probability of matriculation. Results shows that student school choice is sensitive to changes in rank, and the sensitivity to rank declines at lower ranks. There results suggest that it’s rational for college to pay attention to their USNWR rank because it’s an important factor in yielding accepted students. Although previous studies haven’t explored the relationship between SAT optional policy and the school’s ranking, there are several types of hypothesis.
From a positive perspective, eliminating the requirement of SAT, SAT Optional policy might help schools receive more applications. Since most schools admit a stable number of students each year, more applications mean that schools can reject more students and their rejection rate will increase, which indicates the increasing of selectivity. Besides, SAT optional policy allows students to choose submitting their scores or not, therefore, students who choose to submit their SAT scores are usually confident with their scores, suggesting that the average SAT scores school received would increase after adopting the SAT optional. The improvement of test scores and selectivity might contribute to the increasing of college
ranking. However, on the other hand, SAT is one of the most effective predictors of student academic performance, and it has been used for a while as an admission requirement. SAT Optional policy might admit students unqualified students, and it can be harmful to its graduation rate and graduate annual income. Since graduation and retention rates play larger roles than selectivity in ranking system, SAT optional might have negative influence on college ranking. For example, some selective liberal arts schools’ graduation rates and ranking, such as Mount Holyoke, Bates and Connecticut College, decreased moderately after adopting SAT Optional for more than four years (U.S News, 2001-2012). However, there is no study explained whether this relationship caused by coincident, or it’s significant. More studies are needed to explore the impacts of adopting SAT optional on college rankings.