As you've heard me say before, the SAT and ACT are important, but they are never the only factor in a student's admission to college. Back in May, I did a little social experiment to prove this point. I posted a flier I'd gotten from the Princeton Review outside my door. It listed a middle 50% of SAT scores for admitted students from the past year at about 150 colleges around the country, most of them in the northeast. As students from the class of 2010 gathered around the door, it was great to hear their conversation evolve:
"Are you kidding--the average scores at MIT are all above 700?!"
"These scores are so high! We're never going to get into any of these schools!"
"These must be the best schools in the country if they're on this list!"
[Pause.]
"Wait...where's UT? And where's A&M? They're not on the list?"
"Why aren't those schools on here? Why is some crummy place in Pennsylvania with an average scores of 540 on this list?"
"I know TCU is better than like half of the schools on here. It should totallly be on this list!"
"If TCU isn't on here, what other schools are missing? This list doesn't tell us anything."
"Wait, this is just some random list! It doesn't mean anything at all."
As I listened from my desk, I was proud to hear our students sort out two important points. First, SAT scores aren't the only important aspect of a college application. Second, random college lists generated by test-prep organizations based in the northeast are just that: random lists.
In any case, there are schools out there that are trying to move away from the SAT and ACT by becoming "test optional." That is, these schools do not require applicants to submit their SAT and ACT scores when applying. The argument goes that these tests aren't all that they're cracked up to be in terms of indicating college success, and so some colleges don't require them in the name of equity and fairness. While more and more schools join this movement each year, there are a lot of politics involved in that decision. You can read more about it here in the New York Times.
In general, the point is this: not requiring the SAT or ACT does not necessarily mean a college is being all warm and fuzzy toward its applicants. In the most cynical scenario, it raises the profile of a school based on incomplete and misleading information. For example, let's say that Example University has an average SAT math score of 550, and they then decide to go test-optional. The applicants who do well on the SAT and ACT are still going to submit their scores: they're proud of them, and they want to get credit for how well they did on these tests. The applicants who didn't do so well aren't going to submit their scores. This means that the only test scores Example U got are pretty high SAT scores--and in the worst cases, these are the only scores they'll report to ranking organizations like US News and World Report.
This means that a school that goes from test-required to test-optional might have its average SAT Math score shoot up from a 550 to a 650 in a single year, thus making it look like the school got a lot more selective or a lot more impressive. Once the SAT scores go up, their US News and World Report ranking goes up, which gets the school more visibility and which makes more people apply to the now-inexplicably-prestigious Example U. Then, Example U gets more applications, and since they still have only 2500 freshman spots they reject more students, making themselves look even more selective. Becoming more selective makes their ranking in the US News and World Report go up, thus whipping up additional frenzy and making things get more and more out of control.
This is the most cynical version of what can happen; schools like Muhlenberg College, Providence College, and Wake Forest University are test-optional but go to the trouble to report every freshman's SAT score. In any case, please use this information as one more indicator that there is no magic bullet in college admissions. There's a lot of information out there, and no one piece can paint the whole picture of what a college is all about.
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