In the Spring of 2016, the SATs creator, the College Board, will release the revised SAT together with revised scoring mechanics. The intent of this revision is to make the test more aligned with the course work encountered by our students in their everyday high school, and to eliminate test tricks. The revised test will no longer penalize students for choosing incorrect answers.
Currently, students’ grades and the academic rigor of their courses weighs more heavily in college admissions decision than standardized test scores, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s 2013 “State of College Admission” report released in January.
The College Board had to do something as more and more colleges have deemed the SAT as optional, placing more emphasis on high school GPAs and other intangible factors. Another issue facing many colleges is maintaining and/or increasing student diversity. Blindly following SAT scores was not helping to diversify the typical student body at many campuses. Students that received test preparation help, a costly exercise for many, scored better than those students that received no outside help. Colleges also began to question the correlation with college success and SAT scores, and found the relationship to be weak. Many observed that high school GPAs were as good, if not better indicator or predictor of college readiness.
Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed, observed that the GPA is like a video, whereas the SAT is like a snap shot. This “video” shows how students remain resilient, overcome obstacles and work through problems. These characteristics are what colleges are looking for and the old SAT just wasn’t up to the task.
High school grades weigh more heavily in college admissions.
You can help your child in his day-to-day course work so that he or she will achieve high marks and thereby positively influence his or her GPA. If the College Board is successful in its rework of the SAT, it will better align with a student’s school work and therefore should correlate with that student’s GPA.
If it is successful, then I predict that colleges will once again embrace the SAT. Why? We are witnessing a renewed emphasis on localization of school administration. Common Core may have had its roots in an admirable goal of ensuring consistency in education standards, but as this blog is posted, we see many states reversing course and opting out of one or more aspects of Common Core. If localization continues, won’t comparability of various school’s GPAs become problematic? If you, like us, answer YES, then it seems to follow that colleges will look for some form of national measurement to equate various GPA scores throughout the nation. Maybe the new SAT will be that national measurement.
Stay tuned for more updates as the new SAT release approaches.
© Hometown Learning Centers 2015
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