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Opponents of the SAT failt he test of logic.

Andrew Bissell - Arrow Staff

"uh, the accuracy"

   Every year, thousands of high school students must take part in a harrowing, yet necessary process. Forced to wake up early on a perfectly good Saturday morning, they spend four hours of their life in a quiet room with nothing but a pencil and, occasionally, a calculator to keep them company.

   Their pulse quickens and sweat beads on their foreheads as they are subjected to psychologically taxing tests that demand they understand words like "trepidation," "loquacious," and "vacuous." They are asked questions like, "If Mary boards a train headed east from New York at 8:00 A.M., in what state will she be injured by a catastrophic derailment?" (Probably Iowa.) I am speaking of course, of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, better known as the SAT test, and even better known as "that thing I have to score an 800 on so I get into MSU-Northern."

   In a time when grade inflation has made high grade-point averages available to undeserving students and given this year's graduating class a ridiculous 17 valedictorians, colleges and universities need another way to assess an applicant's competence and the likelihood that he will live up to the demands of their institution. Since its origin in 1926, the SAT I Reasoning Test has been an important tool for colleges to make objective comparisons between students from disparate high schools spread across the nation.

   While a student may have a GPA superior to that of his peers, his SAT score allows admissions boards to determine whether his good grades are the result of his own hard work or the excessively charitable grading policies of teachers who sacrifice the integrity of their grades on the altar of social promotion.

   In recent years there have been an ever-increasing number of attacks on the SAT. The test, which in truth asks every student to answer identical questions at each administration, has been accused of subjectivity, unfairness, and racial bias. In the past few months Dr. Richard Atkinson, the president of the University of California, has become the most prestigious figure in the field of education to forcefully advocate the SAT's abolishment from college admissions boardrooms.

   To paraphrase Atkinson's belief: "Standardized tests can be valuable tools to gauge academic progress, but we should not inflate their importance beyond their utility, so therefore we should not use the SAT at all." Atkinson also implied that disparities in the average test scores of minorities may indicate that the test is culturally biased.
Atkinson's arguments fly in the face of reality. It has been statistically demonstrated that the SAT is the most accurate way to predict how well a student will perform in college.

   This is the most important determination college admissions boards must make when deciding whether to accept or reject applicants. It would be pointless for Harvard to accept students with a combined score of 800, because such individuals would be unable to meet the intellectual demands of such a selective university and would likely drop out after a few weeks.

   The SAT is not subjective; it asks the same questions of every student, and every student's test is scored using the exact same standards. SAT questions pertain to English and mathematics reasoning skills that are required of every aspiring college student. The only thing that produces differences in those scores is the superior (or inferior) ability of certain students to answer those questions (which incidentally, is exactly what the SAT or any other self-respecting test is supposed to measure).

   The SAT is not "overused" in admissions decisions. It would of course be patently foolish for a college to rely solely on one test as a measure of its applicants. Every college in the United States requires more than the mere submission of standardized test scores from its applicants. A student's essays, grade-point average, and extracurricular involvement are all taken into account by admissions boards.

   Finally, the SAT is not biased against minorities. While African- and Native-Americans do score lower on average than other racial groups, Asians (who, though quite prosperous, still constitute a minority) consistently outscore whites. More importantly, college performance is predicted with equal accuracy for all ethnicities. A black student with a score of 1250 on the SAT is just as likely to graduate from college as a white student with the same score, and vice versa.

   Despite the arguments of Atkinson and his allies in the war on the SAT, the SAT remains one of the most objective, useful, and racially unbiased standardized tests available to colleges today. The test does not consign benefits to certain groups based upon the color of their skin or the quality of the high school they attended. All individuals who have chosen to commit themselves to academic success, whether they attend a run-down school in the inner city or an elite private school, will be equally capable of scoring well on the SAT.

   This is one reason why, far from being racially or economically biased, the SAT has actually created opportunities for disadvantaged students where none existed before. Subject tests such as the SAT II (which Atkinson suggests should be used in the SAT's place) are biased toward students who enjoy greater educational opportunities.

   Indeed, the founders of the SAT introduced the test at a time when wealth and family ties were all one needed to attend America's most selective colleges. Thankfully, they succeeded in devising a method of testing that allows colleges to evaluate candidates based upon their likelihood of college success, as opposed to their financial or racial ancestry.

   To fill the information gap created by the elimination of the SAT, Dr. Atkinson and his ilk recommend a more "holistic" applications process that will inevitably be more subjective and less individualistic. More weight would be placed on a student's ability to write essays that catch the interest of a college admissions officer, to take subject tests that do more to measure his high school than his mind, and to earn high grades at an institution that may or may not dole out A's like so many free AOL CD's.

   It would become even more difficult for colleges to select applicants that will succeed at their school, and far more meritorious students, who deserve a chance to attend America's finest universities, will be passed up in favor of applicants with a snazzy essay or a favored skin color.

   In light of the arguments set forth by Dr. Atkinson and others who oppose standardized testing, there is an interesting experiment just waiting to be performed. Seal up Atkinson and his friends in a room for four hours with nothing but an SAT I test, pencils, and a calculator, and see how well they do. I hypothesize that the results would be quite disappointing. After all, it is a "reasoning test."