I did a lot of googling and any information I could find was fairly old.
As I currently understand the situation, Virginia Tech is the only school not accepting the old SAT. I am fine with this, but one thing about an article I read stuck out to me -
"While Virginia Tech might be largely alone in its policy relative to the class of 2017 (current juniors), more than a few colleges are signaling possible preferences for the rSAT in requirements being published for future applicants. For example, Yale recently announced that in deference to the quality of the rSAT, SAT Subject Tests would no longer be required and seemed to suggest a mild preference for the rSAT.
“There’s no perfect standardized admissions test,” said Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admission Jeremiah Quinlan in an interview with the Yale Daily News. “But the redesigned SAT does look to be an improvement over the last exam, in terms of clearness and connection to [the college] curriculum.”
Jonathan Burdick, Vice President and Dean of College Admission at the University of Rochester, agrees, “We will prefer the new test over the old at Rochester because it’s a better test of the skills we value.”
Does this mean that my score of 2350 on the old SAT is worth less than the equivalent ~1570 on the new SAT?
I know that if I take the new SAT I likely won’t do as well as I did on the old one - I’d probably score anywhere from 1500-1550. So that said, would I still have a better chance taking the new SAT, considering colleges seem to prefer it more?
Also if anyone has any more information to bring to light, please do.
Whatever the deans say, I think admissions officers at the most selective schools are going to have trouble using the new SAT to identify the best students academically if there are many more scores bunched at the top.
The more scores are bunched at the top, the less able the test is to distinguish the best students from the good and pretty good students .
For example, in the class of 2014, there were 7441 students scoring 2310+ (the 99+ percentile), and 22,800 students scoring 2210+ (the 99th percentile). This is already far too many students for the SAT to have more than a limited weight in admissions decision.
Suppose for the new SAT, the 99+ percentile score for Class of 2017 is 1550, and the 99th percentile score is 1520. (These numbers are invented for the purposes of illustration.) We would be talking about well over 20,000 students with very close to perfect papers, separated by just a careless error or two. If this happens, then SAT scores will be even less able to show who is really the best student. So many people at different skill levels will have the same SAT scores. To some extent, this is already the case. But unless CB adds some more challenging questions to the test, things could get even worse for people at the top. The admins will have carte blanche to admit and reject students based on “other” factors.
If Ivy League deans say that they prefer the new SAT to the old one, my guess is that this is what they want: a bigger carte blanche for using non-academic factors in admissions decisions.
Do you think that SATs ever have more than a limited weight? MIT Chris has stated that they don’t really distinguish between a 750 and an 800, and the stats pretty much confirm it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think top colleges are trying to distinguish between the cream of the cream based on 20 SAT points…
SAT scores had more weight before the curves were recentered in 1995. There was a time when the 99th percentile score was 650 per section, and scores over 700 were very, very rare. I’m not saying that V 750 M 750 guaranteed you a place at Harvard, but pretty much yes. You can forget that now. Now it is not enough to be stronger than everyone else academically, because it is almost impossible to demonstrate this. Now you have to have “other” qualities.
That was back in my day, but it may be a factor that back then the SAT was still considered (or claimed, at least) to be a test of “aptitude” and the “party line” was that it couldn’t be studied for. Hahahah! Good times.
Now that even the CB admits the test can be prepped for (its partnership with Khan Academy is pretty conclusive evidence), it makes a lot of sense that colleges’ reliance on the test has waned somewhat.
Regarding the new SAT having many people scoring at top level, is this a new issue for college. For ACT the maximum score is 36, and that should have a more sever issue. Colleges east look at ACT score more than SAT score I hear. ( I am in CA). And if new SAT produces lower score or higher score compared to OLD SAT, I guess colleges will take that factor for class of 2017 anyway, There would good amount of data by then…
That notion persists, although it’s obvious to anyone in the industry that it was never true and that, as I mentioned, even the CB has essentially admitted as much by partnering with Khan Academy for online test prep: