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Do the SATs Really Matter?
Joshua Kim, Class of 2013
The SATs, who doesn’t know about them? We all know
that millions of high school students take these tests each
year in order to impress top universities. Many students
take SAT prep, spending up to thousands of dollars for
SAT instruction, not including the costs of SAT prep
books. The average SAT scores (25th/75thpercentiles)
for Harvard and MIT are 2090/2390 and 2080/2330,
respectively. Those are some pretty high scores, considering the 2011 national average SAT score is only 1500.
Most students freak out when they look at these statistics
and probably think that they have no choice but to study
hours a week to hit 2200+. The truth is that the SATs
aren’t as important as you might think.
It’s true that colleges do check your SAT/ACT scores and
they are considered in college admissions. However, is it
really that significant? The answer is no. Some colleges
have begun to stop asking for their applicants’ SAT scores,
such as Lawrence
University and Drew University.
What your SAT score demonstrates is your ability to take dozens of hours of SAT prep and memorize a bunch of words. It does not help you pursue a career because it’s just a standardized test.
Let me ask you this, when you go to college, will you ever
look back and say: Taking SAT prep during the summer
and school year was one of the best decisions of my life!
Probably not, and this is what colleges realize too.
If you’re one of the few people who are able to score
above 2200 without any preparation for the SATs, that’s
great. However, most people resort to prep in order to do well because the SATs have created this belief that the
higher your SAT score is, the smarter and more likely you
will be accepted into Ivy League. Here’s what Lawrence
University’s dean of admissions said: “Back when kids
just got a good night’s sleep and took the SAT, it was a lev-
eler that helped you find the diamond in the rough. Now
that most of the great scores are affluent kids with lots of
preparation, it just increases the gap between the haves
and the have-nots.”
Now you’re probably wondering how it all started. When
did the SATs become a measure of one’s ability to spend
hours at a prep class? According to Charles Murray, it
happened shortly after the 1960s. Ironically, Charles
Murray admitted it was because of the SATs he was accepted to Harvard in 1961 because during the earlier
years of the 20th century, the elite universities were
dominated by students from the top schools in the country, such as Philips Exeter Academy of New Hampshire
and Philips Andover Academy of Massachusetts. Even in
the present time, they have great connections with the Ivy
League schools. The SATs provided Murray with a way to
compete with those students because it told college admission officers that just because he wasn’t from a school
as great as Exeter or Andover, it didn’t mean he wasn’t a
great student. So yes, the SATs were an indication of one’s
academic aptitude back in the mid 1900’s. However, it
soon changed.
As more people began to go to college, the SATs became
more important to applicants to top universities. Students of different racial and economic backgrounds had
begun to partake in the SATs, rather than just the upper-
middle whites. After a while, the SATs established a belief
that Ivy League hopefuls should take the test because it
will increase their chances of admission. This started a
whole industry based on SAT prep and of course, the vast
majority of people taking the prep courses were those
in the upper-middle class. For example, “Extrapolating
from the 2006 data on means and standard deviations
reported by the College Board, about half of the 700+
scores went to students from families making more than
$100,000 per year.” Furthermore, former president of
Princeton University William Bowen and his colleagues
did a study on 11 prestigious colleges, including Princeton
and Yale, which revealed that from the mid 1970s to the
mid 1990s, “the proportion of students in the top SES
[Socio-Economic Status] quartile rose from about a third
to a half of all students, while the share in the bottom
quartile remained constant at one-tenth.” Basically, the
wealthier students soon became the majority of SAT test-takers because they were better prepared and thus, more
confident.
The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), an organization that formed in 1937 in
order to help high school students transition to college,
has also recently voice concern over students’ obsession
with performing well on the SATs. For example, Harvard
dean of admissions and financial aid William R. Fitzsimmons said, “It would be much better for the country to
have students focusing on high school courses that, based
on evidence, will prepare them well for college and also
prepare them well for the real world beyond college, in-
stead of their spending enormous amounts of time trying
to game the SAT.” In 2008, the NACAC published a com-
mission report on what they found out about the SATs.
One of their biggest complaints was that one’s SAT/ACT
score is a bad indication of their academic achievement,
as one’s high school performance and their IB/AP grades
are better indicators. Not only that, but also the
fact that one may actually pursue learning about
these courses in college, while preparing for the
SATs will have nearly no impact on one’s career
in college.
I asked a couple of BSGE juniors, who are plan-
ning on taking these tests, what they think about
the SATs and its impact on college admission.
Ricardo Aguayo ’13 said, “Yes they are because
they are the first things that colleges look at. But
there are other things that colleges take into consideration like grades and extracurricular activi-
ties. SATs are just the first step that helps you get
through the door.” Most of the people I talked to said just about the same thing, replying that they see SATs
as just a way for college officers to set their expectations
for applications.
I share the same perspective; if it really was that impor-
tant, average SAT scores would be a lot higher. Grades are
better indicators of how great of a student you are, so if you think the SATs are bigger than grades, you might
want to rethink that. Remember, you’re first and foremost
a student when you’re to colleges.
Imagine two students applying to Duke University: one
student got 2400 on the SATs but only has a B+ average
while the other got 2100 on the SATs and has an A aver-
age. Who do you think would have a better shot? (Assume
all other factors, such as extracurricular activities and
recommendation letters, are the same). Daniel Targonski
’13 replied, “Probably the second person.” Honestly, what
really is the difference between a 2200 and a 2400? The
gap in the number of questions you get correct, between
2200 and 2400, is so small, on average a bit over 10
questions, that it would only require even more hours of
prep to help you close that margin. Is this what colleges
are testing students on, how many hours we’re willing to
spend on SAT prep?
Although I am censuring the SATs rather harshly, I do not recommend that you not care about the SATs at all. I
think that if you’re going for a top university such as MIT,
it’s necessary that you have a decent SAT score because at this point, top colleges have started to realize that SAT
tests are faulty and can’t truly determine an applicant’s intelligence, but it
won’t be for a while
until all elite schools
decide to leave the
SATs as an option.
It’s one of those
things that we know
is wrong, but we do
it anyways. Howev-
er, I still think that
paying thousands of dollars on getting a good SAT score
is pointless because you can achieve the a similar score with just SAT prep books and your own hard work. If you
think about it, there’s really nothing special about prep
classes and the only thing they offer is an instructor who
grades your essays for the writing section. I myself took
an SAT prep course for about 3 weeks during the sum-
mer break, but all I really did was do practice tests. Do
we really need to spend a lot of money and allocate many
hours on preparing for the SATs? Hopefully we will one
day move past pointless standardized tests and focus on
the more practical factors in academia. •
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