How colleges benefit from inflated SAT scores
When discussing the redesigned SAT, one common response to the College Board’s attempts to market the redesigned test to students and families by focusing on the ways in which it will mitigate stress and reduce the need for paid test-preparation, is to insist that that those factors are actually beside the point; that the College Board can market itself to students and families all it wants, but that the test is about colleges’ needs rather than students’ needs.
That’s certainly a valid point, but I think that underlying these comments is the assumption is that colleges are primarily interested in identifying the strongest students when making admissions decisions. If that were true, a test that didn’t make sufficient distinctions between high-scoring applicants wouldn’t be useful to them. But that belief is based on a misunderstanding of how the American college admissions system works. So in order to talk about how the new SAT fits into the admissions landscape, and why colleges might be so receptive to an exam that produces higher scores, it’s helpful to start with a detour. (more…)