Why SAT's Rule

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
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<p>ok, so i'm swamped with work that will require me to stay up till 4 AM and i get a call from my uncle telling me to look up grade fixing in fort lee, new jersey. I wasn't really going to do so until later, but i overslept and missed my morning classes so, to kill time until lunch, i look it up and find that kids are freaking out about being punished by schools for their high school officials for tampering with grades to get them into competitive colleges. actually, i think the kids are more upset that the officials got caught thereby leaving them with their true grades unlike their predecessors who got the full benefit.</p>

<p>that's why the sat's are da bomb. it measures everyones skill level at the same point in time. yeah, i heard the arguments, wealthy kids who can afford to pay for sat tutors score higher, some losers choke on tests, the questions are written in a manner that predisposes non-minorities to higher scores, yada yada yada (i just saw yada yada yada on some old tv show, it was a riot.) all that stuff may be true, but at the end of the day, i think it slots everyone into their particular skill and intellectual level and places them where they belong in the college heirarchy. </p>

<p>so grades are like steroids (i'm making this analogy up as i write, i haven't really analyzed it yet) as the fort lee incident illustrates. grades (and ranking) may artificially pump up the college application stats but the true measure of your intellectual peers is the uniformity of the sat scores. </p>

<p>so to all you "chancers" out there with high gpa's and mediocre sat scores, you all have a chance so long as adcoms continue to pay lip service to the importance of the sat in favor of the gpa which can easily be manipulated. also for full disclosure, i don't work for the college board, never have, but i did do pretty well on the sat's. i also had a pretty decent gpa, but that may have been skewed upwards by my teachers because i am so cute. yada yada yada.</p>

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<p>Adcoms don’t agree with you.</p>

<p>If they did, I would be completely set right now for any college in the country. As it stands, I’m looking at 10-20 schools for reaches.</p>

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<p>SAT I or SAT II?</p>

<p>[Achievement</a> Versus Aptitude Tests in College Admissions](<a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/pres/speeches/achieve.htm]Achievement”>http://www.ucop.edu/pres/speeches/achieve.htm)</p>

<p>To your point, it basically states that SAT I has little correlation - predictive validity - to achievement in college, while SAT II does. </p>

<p>It’s an old-ish speech though: SAT II writing still existed.</p>

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<p>Report went on to say SAT II Writing (now its own category) was the single largest predictor of success in freshman year. </p>

<p>Yet, many schools don’t seem to fully weight the writing score now. One always notices comparisons on the 1600 scale.</p>

<p>Why?</p>

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<p>The problem with standardized tests is that they make the goal of education be to do well on a test, and if performance within these narrow confines is the supreme measure of success, and a 5 on the AP or an 800 on the SAT II is accounted the central purpose of adolescent life, the requirements taking most of the time and attention of the student, and the worth of the individual is reckoned by victory or defeat in this abstract pursuit, then a social machine has been constructed, which, by attaching purpose and meaning to essentially meaningless behaviors and facts, will certainly dehumanize students, and alienate them from their own human nature.
Another problem is that it gives students a narrow-minded view of their own values and worth, and a narrow view of what sort of skills are useful in society and what constitutes intelligence. You should read the book “Multiple Intelligences”. It gets really into what is wrong with standardized tests.
Another reason is that it forces students to believe that all learning and skills are done outside yourself, and there is no subjectivity. While studying for the SAT I and the SAT Subject tests, students are restricted to the process of memorizing (partially and temporarily) somebody else’s answers to somebody else’s question. The most important intellectual ability that people have is the art and science of asking questions and coming to your own conclusion in your own way, which the standardized testing system completely discounts. There is a great saying, which goes, “Students enter school as question marks and leave as periods.”
Also, all of the arguments that you say you’ve heard before (like the rich people being able to hire tutors, and the discrimination) are completely true and accurate, and you didn’t say anything to disprove that.
Another reason is that Standardized tests have the disadvantages of being produced and scored far away from the classroom, being multiple choice so students can’t generate answers or explain their thinking (except for the essay part), timed so speed matters more than thoughtfulness, and administered on a one-shot, high-anxiety basis.
Standardized tests also are harmful for teachers, because they force teachers to be even more rigid with the idea of a curriculum. They did a study in Colorado where some fourth-grade teachers were asked to teach something. About half were told that they must make their students “perform up to standards” and do well on a test, whereas the other teachers were just asked to “facilitate the children’s learning.” Then, after testing all of the kids, they found that the “facilitate” group did significantly better.
There is an awesome quote by assessment expert and educational theorist James Popham, which says that “using a test to gauge educational quality is like measuring temperature with a table spoon.”</p>

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<p>I think there is at least SOME validity with standardized tests. I know that in some classes in some high schools, your grade really just depends on the teacher – the teacher can basically dole out A’s or give no A’s. You got to admit that some teachers are definitely easier than others and give kids A’s even if they haven’t really properly learned the material. </p>

<p>That’s why I think the AP tests and SAT II’s are at least SOMEWHAT useful – adcoms will hopefully notice that if a kid who got an A in, let’s say, AP Chem, gets a 2 or 3 on the AP test and like a 630 on the SAT II that his grade in the Chem class was inflated. No matter HOW bad a test taker you are, it’s very improbable that you’ll get a 2 and a 630 if you really know your stuff. </p>

<p>For the SAT, I agree that it measures more of if you know their monkey tricks or not. Fortunately, I am pretty sure that most people can improve on their scores if they really tried (I did.) But I don’t really think it measures how much you know, but whether you know what they want you to know. eh. :P</p>

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<p>I think you have some good points. Grading is extremely subjective, and an A in one school is different from an A in another, so the SAT Subject Tests can provide some form of standardization. But I do not think that that is the only way to do it; I think there are many ways to assess a person’s work drive without submitting them (and their teacher) to a rigid curriculum and a narrow-minded way of learning. You could show them a copy of one of your papers, or show them your curriculum, or talk about what you learned in an essay, or just <em>gasps</em> not have grades be the be-all-end all factor of what makes a person worthy.
I think that everyone potentially could get a good grade; grades just measure how willing people are to do things that they don’t really want to do. It’s become a sort of social game So, if I am really interested in painting, and I spend all of my time painting instead of memorizing dates for a history test, I might get a worse grade or do worse on a test, but I think that I would provide more value to the college as an art major if I devoted myself more exclusively to painting. I don’t think that there is an advantage in being able to excel at EVERYTHING. Quality over quantity. Wendell Berry once wrote a letter to a magazine editor that said, "You can’t think about what you don’t know, and nobody knows this planet… The people who think globally do so abstractly and statistically, by reducing the globe to quantities… You can’t do a good act that is global… a good act, to be good, must be acceptable to what Alexander Pope called “the genius of the place.” Why can’t you just be good at one thing?
As for the argument that you can do better on the SAT test if you try, it totally depends on the person. I would think a person who works their ass off studying, and ends up receiving a 630 in the math section would be more valuable than a person who happens to be genetically predisposed to do better at math, assuming that the test-takers do not want to major in math. I can do better at almost anything if I try, so what difference does it make?
I don’t think it’s worth all of the horrible things that standardized tests do to students just to be able to give the admissions committees a little less work.</p>

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<p>If it weren’t for the hard numbers, expensive college counselors would be able to get anyone into any college by knowing what the adcoms are looking for. Admissions would become a marketing battle.</p>

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<p>I disagree. I think it already is a marketing battle, in that you have to learn to advertise yourself and make yourself immediately and obviously interesting. You have to make it so that everything useful about you will be apparent after 10 minutes of looking at your application. This is completely marketing, whether or not you choose to have standardized tests or not. And you also argue that you will be able to get in anywhere if you know what the adcoms are looking for. That is ludicrous, because the adcoms are not allowed to accept everyone. The SATs go the same way. When I went to an SAT tutor, all I learned was stuff like “Don’t go for the extreme answer” or “don’t pick an answer that might be offensive” and other ways to “beat the system”, as my tutor called it. This is the exact type of thing that you’re saying you don’t want.
If there was more of an emphasis on who you are and what you have achieved in your life, and your reactions to everything, it would be much harder to “know what the adcoms are looking for” as you say, since those types of things are subjective, unlike tests, which are objective.
And I’m arguing this just from the perspective of what it would be like for the admissions committee. I’m not even going to get into how much harm it causes for students and teachers (who represent the overwhelming majority).</p>

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<p>I also forgot to add that there are a lot of instructional factors that you must take into account. There was a study of math results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress about the SATs, and they concluded that the combination of number of parents living at home, parents’ educational background, type of community, and poverty rate accounted for 89 percent of the differences in scores!</p>

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<p>Lastly, if the SATs are so essential for college admissions people, then how do you explain colleges like Bowdoin (which only accepts 19% of applicants!), Bates, Connecticut, and Mount Holyoke, which don’t require SAT scores?</p>

<p>(On a side note, if anyone is more interested in why the SATs are so horrible, you should all read the chapter “Standards and Testing” in the book “What Does it Mean to be Well Educated?” by Alfie Kohn)</p>

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<p>Also, NYU is becoming completely SAT optional next year which is really indicative of where things are heading in regards to SATs.</p>

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<p>And the AP tests and Subject tests are also horrible, because they force teachers to leave out potentially more interesting subjects in order to make time for the rigid test requirements. According to the Seattle Times, "Due to a drive to make room for the testing process, the arts and music have all but disappeared from many schools.” And one New York City teacher, when asked if she ever lets her children read books of their choice, she responded by saying, “We haven’t been doing ANY reading since we started preparing for the reading test.”
OK that’s my last post for now! <em>laughs</em></p>

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<p>bdkap: it’s obvious to me that you are an apologist for sat poor performance. the point i was trying to raise is that gpa’s are the most subjective of indicators for student performance. the fort lee incident is an example of how grades can be manipulated. beyond that, the locale of the schools also dictate grades. an “A” at tony harvard-westlake is not the same as an “A” at a school in compton. chances are the “A” at westlake will fare much better at swat than the “A” from compton. that said, the sat scores of both those students should indicate the educational standing of both students who both got A’s in the same subject (whether it be an sat subject test or the general sat.) all that mumbo jumbo espoused about learning and being good at one thing is simply garbage. there are vocational schools for being good at only one thing. the fact of the matter is, it is the sat’s that keep kids from being grouped with inferior cattle. all my friends here have equivelant sat scores and they can keep up with the conversation. my experience is that those with lower sat scores need a few seconds to catch up (and that’s why they’re at community college or ohio state or syracuse. the sats don’t care what background anyone has. it just measures where we are all slotted and the schools use that or should emphasize that in forming their class so as to have a level intellectual enviroment. </p>

<p>lastly, those schools that you list as sat optional aren’t in the same league as swat, not even bowdoin. the others are second or third tier, at best. they are sat optional because they could never attract the cream anyway.</p>

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<p>Actually, I got a 2180, which is, to my understanding, above the average at Swarthmore, and I already got into Swarthmore Early Decision. The reason I am so against that is because I think that out of everything I know about myself, the fact that I got a 2180 is probably the least interesting thing about me, and I would hate to be accepted just because of that. And I know SOOOO many really interesting people who got lower SAT scores, and so many people who are better than me at math, but got worse SAT scores, because they didn’t know the tricks about the SAT. The SAT measures your ability to take the test much more than it measures your actual knowledge. I know people who have never read a book in their life and got really high SAT Critical Reading scores. It is very narrow-minded to imply that the SAT Subject test accurately measures your ability in one subject. So much of it depends on how the person is feeling that day, the grading system, and what particular topics and questions happened to be on that test on that day. The other thing that you’re being oversimplistic about is assuming that what people learn the most from in a classroom is the end facts. However, many psychologists and sociologists would argue otherwise. There is a great saying by Marshall McLuhan, which is, “The medium is the message.” This implies that the critical content of any learning experience is the method or process through which the learning occurs. So, what you gain from a chemistry class is far more than just the facts about chemistry. What will matter the most by the time you get to college, and have forgotten most of the facts, is the process you learned to arrive at a truth.
I’m also very curious how you could back up your sentence “all that mumbo jumbo espoused about learning and being good at one thing is simply garbage.” You didn’t really provide any evidence for that. And I doubt you could call something “mumbo jumbo” that has been tried out many times, and has been written about extensively, and has been studied by education theorists intensively, and has been proven to be true in countless experiments. (If you want me to cite some, all you have to do is ask). Next, your argument that people with low SAT scores need a few seconds to catch up is so ludicrous that I wonder if you’re actually serious. My opinion is that grades and test scores don’t show or predict anything besides future test scores. But in case my opinion isn’t persuasive enough, a study of Illinois high schools took 81 valedictorians and followed them through life, and even though they continued to do awesome in college, ten years after graduation, only 1 in 4 were at the highest level of young people of comparable age in their chosen profession, and many were doing much less well. In case that study didn’t convince you, a huge amount of research, including (though not limited to) over 600 published studies by Collegeboard has found that only about 12 to 16 percent of the variance in Freshman grades could be explained by the SAT scores, and found that the percent got even lower when you get into how they do after their freshman year, and the percent is virtually 0 after they graduate.
As for the argument about those schools being in the same league as Swat, Bowdoin accepts 19%, and Swarthmore accepts 15%. You really think that in that 4%, the idea of standardized tests goes from unnecessary to necessary? A school can be plenty competitive without caring about test scores (and without caring about grades either, but that is a different discussion)…</p>

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<p>great discussion, but does anyone know if the SAT writing section is weighted less heavily than the other two and, if so, why?</p>

<p>duhvinci – did you go to HWestlake?</p>

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<p>SAT writing is relatively new, so colleges don’t have as much data about it. In the next few years, when the first class that took the new SAT graduates, they have a better idea of how to evaluate the scores.</p>

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<p>i’m back now and will have little time for this from hence on. let me try to address some of the misconceptions espoused about my comments. first off, i am happy that you, bpkap, made the right choice to attend swat. now to my comments. in my limited exposure to the world, i have never met anyone who scored highly on the sats that wasn’t extremely sharp. that doesn’t mean that some kids who score poorly aren’t, just that i think that most who score poorly, or not exceptionally high, generally slot their intelligence where their sat score falls. of course there are those that score high on the sats and do poorly in class and in life. the sats don’t measure hard work and personality. my position is that the higher you score, the “sharper” one is (however one may define that.) it has nothing to do with the tricks of taking a standardized exam. you can be taught all the tricks that exist and most scores don’t vary much from the first to second to third taking of the exam. my main position is that gpa’s are much less reliable as a tool for admissions because of incidents as occurred in new jersey. a 4.0 and 1850 won’t come close at swat, yet that student will get into bowdoin because they won’t see the sat score (provided what you say is true that the sat’s are not provided at bowdoin, i am relying on that being true without verification), however, i don’t want that kid at swat. frankly, i think that kid is intellectually inferior to me and if enough of them slip in, will ultimately affect the reputation of my college. i am also a big proponent of swat and its discovery program because i do believe that there are inherent problems with the sat as pertains to the economic and ethnic strata of applicants. that said, even the diversity students here have high sats in relation to their ethnic and socioeconomic community. that brings me to the gist of my argument in that the sat’s are a true measure of where the student stands in relation to all other students at one given point at one given time. that is why the sats are important as a tool in building the proper class with kids who are on the somewhat same level. usually, a kid at oberlin or brandeis or skidmore is not a kid who would have been able to get into swat, even with a 4.0 gpa, because of their sat scores, they are where they are. would they like to be here? aside from issues like a small student body, etc etc, of course they would. everyone who asks where i go to college (if they have any concept about schools) always go “oooh” when they hear swat. not only could they probably not run with the big dawgs (or even the little dawgs) here, they would and should be intellectually intimidated by both the pace and volume generated at a typical swat class (trust me, i know) and also by the forward thinking espoused by their classmates. the thought processes here move fast. you go from step one here to step 60 about as fast as a ferrari goes from 0-60. you need that high sat to keep up. </p>

<p>you can also stop citing all the studies and sociologists because your overreliance on that only shows to me that you are unable to think outside the lines. your life is governed by theories formed by others. that’s high school and sad. lastly, there is a big difference between bowdoins 19 and swats 15. bowdoin is probably inundated with apps because they don’t accept the sat. so all the fort lee kids with the phony gpa’s and 1700 sat scores are applying there en masse. that still doesn’t mean that a swattie in a coma couldn’t tear apart the best bowdoin can offer intellectually. seacrest out! (i’m really going to miss that show now that i’m back here)</p>

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<p>I would keep going at this, but if you want to end it, then that’s fine too. I want to start by with your last paragraph, which says that I’m “unable to think outside the lines” and that my life is “governed by theories formed by others” because I am able to back up my opinions with studies and actual evidence. That type of accusation is so inane that I don’t even know if I need to respond to that. I actually laughed out loud when I read that. I’m using studies to PROVE my point, rather than being like you, and just citing a few friends of mine as the basis for all humans. What sounds more valid: saying that a lot of people I know were valedictorians and didn’t go far in life, or using that Illinois study about valedictorians going far in life? What is better: saying that teachers have a hard time dealing with the curriculums that standardized tests make or actually quoting a teacher ranting about that? Also, my last comment (I just recounted) was 29 lines, and I devoted 6 of them to other people’s studies. So, to say that that means that I am “governed by theories formed by others” is obviously you just trying to be as over-the-top as you can.
OK, now to the SAT stuff. It seems that despite all of the overwhelming evidence I’ve shown (likw that study I posted about how the SATs affect performance that I posted) which proves otherwise, you are very, very sure of yourself that SAT performance is directly related to how “sharp” you are. Now, after you accuse me of relying on the theories of others, and not being able to “think outside the lines” (the phrase should be “think outside the box” by the way), to blindly say that the SATs show how intelligent you are, without having any proof for that besides a few of your friends, seems much more of a mindlessly accepting attitude than I have, since going against the status quo by definition is thinking outside of the box. I don’t even think the Collegeboard would argue that people who get lower SAT scores are “intellectually inferior” as you say! The Collegeboard just thinks that the SAT measures some skills you may have picked up in high school. So, if I’m not allowed to use studies to prove you wrong, what can I say, besides the fact that there are many, many ways to be intelligent besides the ones that we are just taught in the classroom? Have you learned Howard Gardner’s nine types of intelligence? I think you would benefit a lot from looking them up. And to say that any one test, let alone a multiple choice test, can validate someone’s intelligence is very far-fetched. I know you said you won’t have much time to keep debating this, but if you do, I would be EXTREMELY curious what about the nature of the SAT you think can show universally who is smart and who is dumb. I’d be extremely curious how you think being able to answer a question like “In line 7, “lugubrious” is referring to…” or “what is the arithmetic mean of this set of numbers” will make you an overall superior person to someone who answers that incorrectly? How can you possibly think that that’s all there is to life? And as much as you can disagree, the SAT is totally about the tricks. My SAT tutor even admitted that! After I learned the tricks (like don’t go for the really specific answer, and don’t pick something negative towards a group of people, only guess if you can eliminate one or more answer, etc.), my Critical Reading score increased 100 points. And as for you arguing that many diverse people get great SAT scores, the white, rich, men still do SOOOOOO much better on the SATs than do poor, minority women. Like, by FARRR. But I won’t cite any statistic, because then you’ll get mad at me for relying on others… Ugh, I have to, it’s too hard not to. Go to [National</a> Statistics on Education and Equity Issues, By Race and Ethnicity](<a href=“http://www.maec.org/natstats.html#sat]National”>http://www.maec.org/natstats.html#sat)
As for saying that grades are even more subjective as noticed by that scandal, I completely agree! I’m not arguing for a greater emphasis on GPA. Actually, I think that grades should be abolished too. I would want a greater emphasis on things that are actually about you as an individual, like written comments, portfolios, student-led parent-teacher conferences, exhibitions, etc. The Metropolitan Learning Center, Poughkeepsie Day School, School Without Walls, Alternative Community School, Hawthorne Valley School, Malcolm Shabazz City High School, Waring School, Carolina Friends School, and Saint Ann’s School all don’t have grades, and they all send kids to Ivy League schools all the time! (Not that Ivy League schools are more impressive than non-Ivy schools, but I want to prove that even the insanely competitive schools don’t need grades to make an admissions decision). I don’t think grades are any better than tests. If you make the emphasis all about grades, then students will become crazily stressed about how well they do on their tests in school, and they won’t be able to be as interested in the actual content of the class. If you are more interested in what is wrong with grades, read the chapter “From Degrading to De-Grading” in the book “What Does it Mean to be Well Educated?”
Last, I want to talk about the Bowdoin issue. You cannot simply assume that “all the fort lee kids with the phony gpa’s and 1700 sat scores are applying there en masse”. There is NOTHING to back that up. How can you possibly assume that? So, since you are not a person who likes to actually see what the percents show, I looked it up myself, and in the book By Design by Richard J. Light, it says that approximately 70% of applicants to Bowdoin each year submit SAT scores. So, chill.
I can’t wait to see you at Swat next year! I would totally be up for discussing this issue more over dinner or something. :slight_smile:
Since you say you won’t post anymore, I would be very interested in what everyone else on this board thinks. Whose side are you on? If you are on my side, and are against standardized tests, I would encourage you to sign this online petition against Mayor Bloomberg, who is trying to get companies to make standardized tests for children in K-2… [K-2</a> Testing Petition : [ powered by iPetitions.com ]](<a href=“http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/TOFT_K2Testing/]K-2”>http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/TOFT_K2Testing/)</p>

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<p>Why don’t you just replace the SAT with a IQ test if your just trying to measure one’s “sharpness”? I can relate to what both of you are saying - but you have to remember colleges are just looking for the “sharpest” students - also you run the danger of students and teachers spending way too much time “preparing” for the SAT (or other test) that you don’t really learn much… That being said the SAT and SAT subject tests, APs have an important role: they can help you see that a student with a 90 in a super-tough calculus is a better student than the person with a 100 in a super-easy class. </p>

<p>As for me I’ve gotten a super-high IQ, but I struggle with the SAT, because of the stupid mistakes I make under presure… I’m not sure how I should be judged because of that, but it would be unfair and incorrect to say that I’m intellectually inferior to you, because you have higher SAT scores.</p>