SAT Scores Optional At Some Colleges?

What’s your score? Do I care?

SAT scores are coming out soon (or have already been released, depending upon when you read this). This brings thoughts of the future to millions of American high school students. Nervous feelings, excitement, expectation, even dread may color the pallet of days. What will the score mean for their college and career prospects? Does a high score ensure success in life? Does it make it easier to obtain a cash advance? Do all colleges still care about SAT scores?

No.

Jeremy Rodriguez reports for Carnegie Mellon’s The Tartan Online that an increasing number of colleges are ready to consider SAT scores optional in the admissions process.

Change the game

Thomas Espenshade and Chang Young Chung, a sociology professor and statistical programmer from Princeton University, have conducted a study that found that “dropping standardized test scores as an admissions requirement will lead to increased percentages of minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students admitted to college.”

Clearly, it’s a story we’ve heard before, at least anecdotally. In the modeling for the study, researchers assumed that at the SAT-optional colleges, those with high scores would still apply there and receive the benefits of their scores. There are no advantage for high SAT scores at institutions that don’t use the scores in the admissions process.

Hooray for handouts

In the SAT-optional model, private colleges where applying black students with a mean SAT score of 1405, the percentage of admitted applicants who are black would increase by three percent. In an environment where the SAT was not considered at all, the percentage of accepted students goes up almost six percent. For Latino students, the numbers are three and four percent. ... click here to read the rest of the article titled "SAT Scores Optional At Some Colleges?"