A commission convened by the National Association for College Admission Counseling is calling for colleges and universities to drop the use of the SAT or ACT as a requirement for admission, stating that a “one-size fits all” approach for the use of standardized test does not reflect the realities facing the nation’s many and varied colleges and universities.
The commission, led by Dr. William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard University, challenges the higher education community to re-evaluate the significance of exams that are more likely to predict the household income of a particular student, some scholars say, than a student’s performance in college.
As long as institutions require standardized tests, the commission says, the test preparation industry will thrive, skewing the overall purpose of the exam, which is designed to measure how much a student learned in high school and not how well they’ve been coached.
Fitzsimmons suggests colleges and universities rely more heavily on admissions exams tied to high school curricula, such as the College Board’s SAT II subject test, Advanced Placement tests or International Baccalaureate examinations. These tests better report what a student has learned in class.
The report indicates students with higher socioeconomic statuses benefit from test preparation, which helps raise their scores, while students without the financial means are “penalized for lower test scores.”
The commission also proposes colleges and universities abandon “cut scores,” or minimum admission test scores, for merit aid eligibility. Moreover, the commission strongly urges the National Merit Scholarship Corporation to stop using PSAT scores as an “initial screen for eligibility,” citing the scarcity of aid and the advantage affluent students have in accessing test preparation courses.
The commission encourages admissions professionals to comprehensively “understand the differences in test scores among different groups of people” and assess the use of standardized test scores relative to the broader social goals of higher education.
