Students who take more academic courses do significantly better on the SAT, ACT, and Advanced Placement tests.

This is true for all students but appears to be particularly true for African-American and other minority students. According to the latest scores issued by the College Board, which reports the national and state-by-state scores on the Scholastic Achievement Test and Advanced Placement tests, minority students comprise almost a third of all students taking the SAT.

Of all the minority groups, Asian Americans made the most significant gains on the SAT over the past ten years, with an increase of 17 points on both the verbal and math parts of the test. American Indians followed close behind those gains with increases of 12 points on the verbal and 14 points on the math scores. African-American students continued a long trend of increased scores, posting a six-point increase on the verbal part of the test and an 11-point increase on the math part of the test.

Those gains take into account the "recentering" the College Board undertook last year which slightly changed the way the scores are reported. In releasing its improved scores, the College Board pointed to an increase in the number of academic core courses being taken by high school students today in comparison to ten years ago. The College Board reported that 41 percent of students taking the SAT took 20 or more year-long academic courses in high school -- the highest level of study ever reported by SAT takers.

Those who reported this much study were 45 percent of the women 44 percent of the Asian-American, white and "other" students; 37 percent of men and non-Mexican Hispanics; 27 percent of African-American students; and 23 percent of Mexican-American students.

The same trend was reported by ACT, the other major standardized test used by college admissions offices to screen students for admission. ACT scores have been going up since 1992, when the national composite score was 20.6 (on a scale from 1 to 36), where it had been for several years. This year the national composite score was 20.9. ACT attributed the higher score to the fact that more students -- especially females and minorities are taking higher-level "core" courses, which it defines as English, math, social studies and science.