Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown Plans To Keep Using SATs

Georgetown’s admissions office still believes that the SAT I is a valid criteria for admission despite recent national discussions that have cast the high school tradition as unfairly biased and not indicative of students’ future performance.

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Charles Deacon said “SATs are an interesting focal point,” and serve to “illuminate grades.” Deacon did stress, though, that there are many factors of an applicant taken into account besides the SAT, among the most important being class rank and grade point average.

“With all other factors they [SAT scores] have a useful place in the selection process,” he said.

With the recent dismay expressed by University of California President Richard Atkinson over the use of SAT scores in evaluating college applicants, the importance of SAT scores is an issue that does not appear to be going away any time soon.

With 15,300 people applying being pared down to 1,480 for the incoming freshman class, admissions officers maintain that SAT I scores are essential because, according to Deacon, they are “the only common denominator in the files.”

According to a March 19 article in Time magazine, a majority of colleges share Georgetown’s stance, although the tide might soon be turning, as schools such as the University of Georgia, University of Texas at Austin and the University of Massachusetts have begun reviews of SAT I use in their admissions policies.

Atkinson recently gave a speech advocating dropping the SAT as a means of judging applicants. As reported by Time magazine, Atkinson emphasized that the intense preparation put into the SATs has taken away from the more important information learned daily in classrooms.

Controversy over the SAT is not new. Originally designed as an intelligence test, according to the College Board’s Web site, “the SAT I measures your verbal and math reasoning abilities. These are abilities you develop over time through the work you do in school and on your own.”

To some people, including Atkinson, this seems an unfair way to accept students because it negates the hard work that they may have put into their studies at school.

SAT critics say it puts students who are lower on the socioeconomic scale at a disadvantage because they do not have access to tutoring programs, such as those offered by the Princeton Review or Kaplan, which can cost more than $800 according to the Princeton Review. Programs like Princeton Review the SAT is a test on which students can perform better if they are trained for the test and not related to knowledge.

Some scholars have also said that the SAT discriminates against African Americans and Hispanics, who have consistently scored lower on the test than whites.

Research by Stanford University psychologist Claude Steel indicates that psychological reasons explain the lower test scores among African Americans and Latinos. In the Time article, Steele said he believes that because these students know the statistic that students from their ethnic background generally score lower, they believe that they cannot do well, and as a result, do not.

Steele did not return messages left yesterday.

Georgetown NAACP Chapter President Michaela Brown (COL ’03) said that she agrees that the SAT I can be discriminatory.

“I don’t think it’s very indicative of someone’s intellect, and I think that a lot of people are not prepared for that,” Brown said.

“I don’t really advocate [using the SAT],” she said. “Its geared toward an upper class education which a lot of minorities don’t have.”

Most colleges rely on universal tests in order to differentiate between the thousands of applicants and thousands of different high schools. Atkinson said he is hoping to develop a new test.

In the mean time, while there is no other alternative, Atkinson has suggested replacing SAT scores with SAT II scores. Since these tests are based on classroom learning, they will eliminate the problem of tests that are based on test-taking skills instead of knowledge, he said.

According to many college officials, including Deacon, use of the SAT II scores will likely enhance the disparity between test scores since students at lesser quality schools will not have as strong a grasp on the classroom material as students in higher level schools.

Time gave two examples of replacement tests for the SAT that have been formulated, the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Test and a test developed by Yale University Psychologist Robert Sterner. In Sterner’s test, students are asked to design logos or describe how they would act in a real-world situation, such as asking a teacher for a recommendation.

These tests, though, have only been performed on a small scale and do not seem likely to replace the SAT in the meantime, according to Time.

While the debate over the SAT ravages on, high school students will have to continue getting up on Saturday mornings to struggle through three and a half hours of analogies, word problems and reading comprehension, in the hope of earning their meal ticket to college, at least if they want to go to Georgetown.

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