Mark Montgomery over at Great College Advice has a nice review of some of the new issues that are being raised with the SAT exam.  Basically, the College Board is bragging about how the SAT scores for this past year have stablized from the past few years decline. What they don’t discuss, however, is that the scores for the broad categroy of whites and asians have increased but all other racial minorities have decreased. Moreover, the clear disparity based on income is again see in the SAT results. In other words, the higher your family income the higher your SAT scores will generally be.

The Los Angels Times is reporting that the College Board, those people who give you the PSAT and SAT exams, have come up with a new exam for 8th graders.  To be fair, I am not a huge fan of standardized tests to begin with although I understand their use in limited circumstances. But the last thing students need to worry about is yet another standardized test in the lead up to college.

The argument in favor of the test is that it will help identify students who might be high achievers that should take honors course and AP courses in high school. In my opinion, this is a ridiculous argument.  Students should be challenged in high school whatever their academic strength. A good student will not be identified by one test given in 8th grade.  A good student is one who has a natural ability or who works hard to achieve.  Some good students do well on standardized tests and others do not do as well. Are we to follow the results of the 8th grade test to determine that a poor test taker not take advanced courses in high school?  Or what about the student who does well at standardized tests but has no motivation to do well in his classes? How will he view his high school classes differently just because he scored well on this test.

I encourage students to have some basic background on the PSAT before taking the exam junior year because there is a potential benefit to doing well on the PSAT; you may become a National Merit Scholar. So taking a practice PSAT as a sophomore makes sense. But I discourage students from focusing too much on standardized tests whether they be the PSAT, the SAT or the ACT. Yes, you need to understand the exam, and yes taking practice tests can be beneficial. Even taking a prep course can be helpful for some students. But too much focus on standardized testing often works to the detriment of the student by leaving less time for class work or extra curricular activities.

A new test in the 8th grade provides only one benefit. And that benefit is more money for the College Board who has been losing market share as a result of the increased usage of the ACT and the increase in the number of test optional colleges. At this point, most students in this country are taking so many standardized tests that they have lost much of the time to learn such subjects as math, English, history, or foreign languages.   That is a shame.

Albright College, a private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, has announced that they are going test optional beginning with students applying for admission in 2009. Like other colleges that have gone test optional, Albright’s stated reason is that they have found little correlation between test scores and first year grades or graduation rates.

For a complete list of test optional colleges go to Fairtest.org.

The College Board and ACT have jointly announced new concordance tables for their respective exams. For those of you not familiar with concordance tables, it is a way to approximate a score on one test with a score on the other test.

You will note that there are actually two concordance tables, one for comparing the ACT composite score with the SAT Critical Reading and Math score. There is a separate concordance table for comparing the ACT combined English/Writing score with the SAT Writing score. Here is a quote from the College Board on how to work conversions:

“From ACT to SAT:

The ACT Composite score does not contain the ACT Writing Test score. For this reason, you will get the most accurate estimates if you use the tables as follows:

• For students who do not take the optional ACT Writing test:
  • use Table 1 to concord an ACT Composite score to SAT (CR+M) score on the 400-1600 scale
• For students who take the ACT Plus Writing:
  • use Table 1 to concord from the ACT Composite (which does not include ACT Writing) score to SAT (CR+M) score; use Table 2 to concord from ACT Combined English/Writing score to SAT Writing score; then simply add SAT (CR+M) concorded scores and SAT (W) concorded scores to get to the SAT 600-2400 scale

From SAT to ACT:

• Add the SAT Critical Reading and Mathematics scores together; Use Table 1 to concord from the SAT (CR+M) score to the ACT Composite score; use Table 2 to concord from SAT Writing score to the ACT English/Writing score”

I always encourage the students that I work with to take practice exams of both the SAT and ACT to see on which test they have the better score. Having an updated concordance table will help all students to compare their respective scores to see on which test they perform the best. Once you know which is your better test, focus on that exam for your practice sessions.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the College Board, the administrator of the SAT, will once again allow students to decide which SAT scores to submit to colleges.  This new policy will go into effect for the class of 2010. This policy previously existed under the name of score choice and was eliminated by the College Board several years ago. Currently, all SAT scores are submitted to a college when the student applies. At this time, there is no information on the College Board site confirming this report.

The ACT allows students to choose which scores to send and it is logical to assume that the College Board is changing their policy to compete with the ACT which has been gaining in popularity in the past few years.

The reality is that for most students the ability to withhold certain scores has no effect on their admissions chances. Virtually all colleges will take the students highest test score if multiple scores are submitted. Moreover, the withholding of scores may work to the disadvantage of some students since most colleges take the highest sub scores on the SAT to reach a composite score. If a student has a great math score on one test but a better critical reading on another test, most colleges will combine those sub scores to reach a higher overall score. If the student withholds one of those exams, their overall scores will be viewed by the colleges as lower.

The ability to withhold scores also arguable works to the disadvantage of less affluant students who can’t afford to take the SAT multiple times.

Bottom line? This announcement, if true, appears to be nothing more than a new marketing ploy from the College Board that adds no real benefit to the students taking the exam.

“The results (of the new SAT validity study)  show that the changes made to the SAT did not substantially change how well the test predicts first-year college performance.”  That is a quote from a new report from the College Board addressing a “large-scale national validity study of the SAT”.

As previously reported,  the new writing section is the best predictor of college success of the three SAT sections.  This is an interesting finding considering the problems that have been previously addressed regarding the writing section. The report finds that high school grades are overall a better predictor of college succes than the SAT, but the College Board suggests that a combination of high school grades and SAT scores is the best predictor of college success.

A New York Times articles provides a counterpoint to the College Board’s discussion of the new SAT report with comments from Robert Schaeffer of FairTest.

The bottom line? High school grades continue to be the most effective predictor of college success althought the new SAT writing section is a better predictor than the other two sections. Given the problems with the new Writing section and the reluctance of many colleges, including the most selective, to use the new Writing section in admissions decisions, there appears to be increasing legitimacy to the argument that replacing the SAT may be a good idea.

Community colleges are a great choice for many students who either are interested in a technical type program or who want to save some money the first two years of college. But there are some little known problems that can occur with those students wishing to transfer to a four year college after a community college.

Jay Matthews, and education columnist for the Washington Post, highlighted some of those problems in an article entitled Community College Transfer Mess. One particular problem, that I have also seen among students with whom I work, is the failure of four year institutions to fully recognize all of the work done at the two year college. A related problem is that the four year institutions will often have requirements for a particular major that mandates a student take the course at the four year college and will not fully recognize a similar course taken at the community college.

There are also often concerns about financial aid for students transferring to a four year college since some four year colleges will reserve their best aid for incoming freshman, leaving less aid for transfer students. The result is that the last two years of college can often cost more than they would have if the student had started at the four year college initially. This offsets some, or all, of the savings a student receives from initially attending a community college. The New York Times also an article today discussing the problems with getting loans that some students at community colleges are having.

I have written about many of these issues in my college transfer help article. Transferring from one college to another can work great for some students but like most things related to college admissions, you need to know all of the issues before making a choice.

A new study out of Chicago reinforces what I have suggested in the past and that is that spending too much time preparing to take the ACT is not beneficial. The study found, in part, that studying to much was not beneficial because it took time away from studying the broad content knowledge that students need to know to do well on the ACT.

This is not to say that a student should go in cold to the ACT and just see what happens. At the very least the student should have reviewed the instructions of the exam before taking the test so as to not waste time reading instructions the day of the exam. I also suggest that a student take at least one practice exam just to get some level of comfort with taking this type of test. However, spending a great deal of time in review for the ACT is probably not beneficial.

The SAT is more susceptible to test preparation and I will often recommend that a student do more test preparation for the SAT if they have chosen to take that test. However, this is a point os diminishing return where spending too much time, even on the SAT, is not beneficial.

Wake Forest University has announced that they are going test optional beginning with the freshman class of 2009. While I have reported on a number of liberal arts colleges that have recently gone test optional, this news is important because Wake Forest is the highest ranked national university to adopt a test optional admissions standard. US News currently ranks Wake Forest as number 30 on the list of national universities. Although you know that I don’t put faith in arbitrary rankings, few would dispute that Wake Forest is a top university.

One of the arguments in the past has been that liberal arts colleges can go test optional because they don’t have as many applicants, but that the national universities don’t have the resources to evaluate all of their applicants. Wake Forest has announced that they will be adding 20% to their admissions staff to better evaluate their applicants and to encourage underrepresented students to apply to Wake.

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed has an excellent article about some of the discussions that Wake Forest had on whether to go test optional. Scott also reviews this years admissions results at Worcester Polytechnic University which last year became the first selective science school to go test optional.

I am sometimes asked if students need to take both the SAT and ACT and the quick answer is no. A student only needs to take one standardized test for college admissions. The question then becomes, which test.

All students should take at least one practice test of the SAT and ACT. The College Board and ACT each offer a free practice test for students to take. The practice test should be taken under standard testing procedures to get the best estimate of your score. After taking each test the student should consider on which test they had the best score and focus their studies on that test. To compare the scores on the two tests, look at one of the comparison tables available.

There are other issues and some of those are reviewed at our page on the SAT or ACT.