<p>Why doesn't Cornell, and many other universities for that matter, care about the SAT Writing score?</p>
<p>because writing, and scoring writing, is extremely subjective.</p>
<p>And performance on these tests varies extremely widely based on ethnicity, location, exposure, etc. Its merit as a standardized metric is still debated.</p>
<p>Scoring the essay is def subjective, but multiple choice identification of grammatical mistakes isn’t nearly as subjective.</p>
<p>I’m not sure whether Cornell looks at writing score. For the ACT, it does ask for ACT with writing.</p>
<p>Simple Answer: 'Cause Cornell is a cool/awesome college, and writing is not a single important factor.
Complicated Answer: Studies show that writing does not help colleges pick out “better” candidates for their school. If anything it’s a random score that may or may not correlate to the cognitive abilities of people. Besides, we had brilliant people graduate college before the SAT writing was part of the SAT I tests.</p>
<p>@playhacker
Didn’t a study come out last year showing that a high writing score was a better indicator of future college success than CR and math?
Although, I have to admit, scoring the essay is bloody subjective.</p>
<p>^, no the study showed that the CR+M score was 66% effective at predicting student success, and the CR+M+W was 67% effective at predicting student success (within the margin of error).</p>