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Minority Groups and the SAT:

Standardized Testing for Selective College Admissions

Introduction | SAT in the admissions process | Strengths | Weaknesses | Validity?

Minority groups and the SAT | Dropping SAT requirement for college admissions Conclusion | Links | About the author

INTRODUCTION

Colleges and universities receive thousands of applications every year from high school students who wish to gain a higher level of education. These applicants come from all over the world, they are men and women, black and white, with different accomplishments and backgrounds.

With so many applicants and such a limited number of admitted students, institutions of higher education have adopted policies which help them to choose the most qualified students to accept regardless of race, gender, or background.

These are the ideals held highly by selective American colleges and universities (1):

- To sustain an equality of opportunity for all applicants ~ to find potential talent or ability in all students, not just qualities that are inherited from socioeconomic status or upbringing

- To assess the contribution the student will make to his future classmates and to those he interacts with after graduation

- To focus on the individual, not the groups within which he or she may be affiliated ~ recognizing the individual educational disadvantages, social discrimination, knowledge of a minority culture, and involvement to improve the community

- To find students with balance, a "golden mean" which should include the individual's outstanding characteristics: effort, performance, and promise

The SAT in the admissions process

Amid rising numbers of applications from students across the country and around the world, institutions of higher education had to begin using standardized tests to help identify students with potential. Colleges and universities adopted the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) to aid them in their search for qualified applicants.

In the year 2000, 44% of high school graduates took the SAT to help them apply to college (2). The score that is calculated in this test has become increasingly important to the students, parents, guidance counselors and admissions personnel of this country's educational system.

An important question has surfaced throughout the years, culminating in a sudden move to drop the testing requirement from the admissions process of many schools. How well does the SAT measure or evaluate applicants, according to the ideals listed above?

Strengths of the SAT

Usefulness in the admissions process (1)
- Measures for colleges a student's basic verbal comprehension and quantitative ability
- The test has a broad applicability to students from across the country and for diverse universities. Distinctly diverse schools such as MIT, Lexington Community College (KY), Pepperdine, and Savannah College of Art and Design could not test everyone with separate tests.

- The score gives admissions staff an apparently precise and objective number

- The relationship between scores and those admitted is easy to explain (yet hard to justify, as we will examine later)

- The test is good at determining who will distinguish themselves academically and who will fail, according to the extremes of what the test measures.

- The SAT is a good indicator of how students will perform in their first year of college (3)
Usefulness to the student (1)
- Average SAT scores for a university may help students decide whether or not to apply to certain schools

- Student can submit a score that is free from the scrutiny of the personal goals or objectives of the school authorities, admissions personnel, or interviewers

- The SAT may help to identify exceptional students that would otherwise go unnoticed

Weaknesses of the SAT

The test is in a completely different format from what students are used to taking. Subject-specific tests are administered throughout their education, but this abstract test is given to supposedly measure scholastic ability (1)
Teachers are under pressure to teach in the way that the test is formatted, thus there is school time devoted to analogies and reading comprehension instead of literature or algebra
College admissions officers are under pressure to increase scores. The numerical grading system that the SAT establishes spawns bureaucratic jargon and rivalry (Ex: "Our school has higher scores") (4)
SAT scores in the middle range have to be interpreted with care. These middle scores do not predict a student's potential as effectively as scores at either end of the spectrum

Questioning the Validity of the SAT

Does the test measure how well one will do in college and in life?

Researchers have debated this question and presented data that supports both sides of the argument. Many factors influence success in college, including the quality of high school education, socioeconomic upbringing, and work ethic. Still, researchers have attempted to correlate SAT scores with everything from GPA in college to happiness later in life. Correlations found between these factors remain subjective because of so many other contibuting environmental and possibly biological factors:

* Researchers have attempted to investigate how SAT scores correlate with prior circumstances in life. Scores have been shown to correlate with family support, income and the parents' level of education. (5)

*Another interesting discrepancy is that women tend to do worse on standardized tests, but get better grades than men during high school and college. (3)

Does the test measure what it is supposed to?

The College Board, which administers these standardized tests, has changed the meaning of the acronym SAT in the past to be careful that they were correctly describing the purpose of the test. The SAT originally stood for Scholastic Aptitude Test, but concern over the word "aptitude" led them to change the name to Scholastic Assessment Test. Even this name was misleading, though, because the test does not exactly measure what you have learned in school or what many might consider "scholastic." As a result, the College Board continues the call the test the SAT, but gives no formal definition for the acronym.

What exactly does the SAT measure? A common response is that it measures how well you can take an SAT. Professional test prep services have become extremely popular, with parents paying hundreds of dollars per session to prepare their children for the test. An estimated 150,000 students paid $100 million for coaching in 2000 (4). Test scores for students who attended a Clemson University SAT workshop for minorities increased overall, averaging to nearly a 40-point increase per student (7).

Popular SAT self-preparatory books

Does the SAT measure minorities fairly?

Observe the following statistics from the 2000 SAT, specifically the differences between male and female scores, and between White scores and the other groups:

(8) From Black Issues in Higher Education. Note: "Puerta Rican" is incorrectly spelled in the original text. Correction: Puerto Rican.

A furious debate over the meaning of these discrepancies has scientists examining the scores to determine differences between the races and between the sexes.

- On one hand, some researchers assume a genetic basis for the differences in SAT scores. They attribute some of the discrepancy to environmental factors, but maintain that there is an inborn difference in intelligence between the two groups. Herrnstein and Murray's Bell Curve propagates the idea that intelligence can be measured by a single number, allowing researchers to conclude that there is a biological difference between whites and other groups, males and females (9).

- On the other hand, some researchers believe that the discrepancy is entirely due to environmental factors, citing poor conditions for minorities, cultural bias on the test, inadequate school systems, and lower socioeconomic status for certain groups.

Examples of research done on the SAT and minorities

(6) Graphs are adapted from Bowden and Bok's Shape of the River, p. 20-21

- A combination of these factors and individual genetic makeup is probably the reason for these different test scores. Differences between groups, such as Whites and Latinos, accounts for a small percentage of variation in test scores. Most of the variation is between individuals. Even so, Black and Latino students have been closing the gap, improving their scores as a group steadily up until the 1990s (8). The improvement has stagnated over the last decade, prompting politicians and educators to reexamine head-start programs and urban city school districts.

Should the SAT requirement be dropped from college admissions?

Many colleges have already dropped the requirement, including Bates, Bowdoin, University of Connecticut, and Mount Holyoke college. They have cited little difference in the quality of their student body (5). Marshall University has made the SAT optional (2). Canada has no such standardized test, yet still maintains an excellent university system.

Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California, proposed to the American Council on Education on February 18, 2001, that the California college system drop its SAT requirement (4). He questioned the validity of the test and the way it had weakened school systems, given an advantage to the affluent who could afford coaching, and driven college admissions officers to increase scores, at the expense of disadvantaged minorities. Atkinson recommended that two changes be considered:

Dropping the SAT requirement and instead requiring only standardized tests that assess mastery of specific subject areas. The SAT II tests were offered as an example of subject-specific tests, as opposed to tests that measure "aptitude" or "intelligence"
Movement away from admission processes that use narrowly defined formulas to determine qualified applicants. This would entail adopting procedures that looked at students comprehensively, considering how their environment has helped or hindered them.

He also added his prediction of what would happen if the SAT requirement was removed or made optional:

Short term effect: There would not be a significant change in who is admitted. Qualified students would still be identified through the other admissions criteria.

Long term effect: High school curricula and teaching would have to be strengthened; a stronger connection would be established between what students learn and accomplish in high school with what they will experience in college; attention would be diverted from test prep and more on mastery of the subject.

In an article in The Chronicle Review, John H. McWhorter, a professor of linguistics at University of California-Berkeley, criticized Atkinson's proposal to get rid of the SAT requirement (10). He argued similar points that have been discussed earlier, specifically the ability of the test to identify promising students, regardless of their race or gender. He predicts that the overall quality of the student body would lower as a result of dropping the test. His fear is that colleges will pass over students whose grades are bad (because of inadequate school systems or poor environmental conditions), but who might score well on tests and show much potential. He feels that too much blame is being put on the test itself and says he wants the educational system to face other real problems that need to be addressed, such as hiring good teachers, developing minority programs, and providing funding to failing schools.

Conclusion

The policy for admissions at selective institutions is facing a singular question: Do we look at what a student has accomplished or the potential that he or she shows on a standardized test? In his article in Time, John Cloud pointed out a problem with using tests such as the SAT to determine students' futures (2). Do we reward those who have demonstrated achievements with the gifts they are given, despite environmental factors or genetics, or do we reward our genes, in a sense, for giving us abilities with which we are born?

The debate continues as affirmative action proponents, minority groups, college admissions officers and high school students await the answers to these difficult questions.

References Cited

"Public Policy and Academic Policy." Selective Admissions in Higher Education. Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education. Washington: Jossey-Bass, 1977. 1-18.
Cloud, John. "Should SATs Matter?" Time Magazine. Mar. 12, 2001. 62-70.
Sacks, Peter. Standardized Minds. Cambridge: Perseus Books, 1999.
Atkinson, Richard, "Test skills, not aptitude." Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mar. 5, 2001. A9.
Kohn, Alfie. "Two Cheers for an End to the SAT." The Chronicle Review. Mar. 9, 2001. B12.
Bowen, William G., and Bok, Derrek. The Shape of the River. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998.
Yates, Eleanor Lee. "SAT Boot Camp Teaches Students the Rules of the Test-Taking Game." Black Issues in Higher Education. Vol. 18 (1). Mar. 1, 2001. 30-31.
Roach, Ronald. "Gaining New Perspectives on the Achievement Gap." Black Issues in Higher Education. Vol. 18 (1). Mar. 1, 2001. 24-25, 28-29.
Herrnstein, Richard J., and Murray, Charles. The Bell Curve. New York: Free Press, 1994.
McWhorter, John H. "Eliminating the SAT could Derail the Progress of Minority Students." The Chronicle Review. Mar. 9, 2001. B11-12.