SAT revolution brings no immediate effect for Tufts

The first Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was administered by former Harvard president James Bryant Conant in June of 1926 to a group of 8,040 predominantly male and exclusively white students. Today, millions of students worldwide of different races, genders, and nationalities take the SAT. Over the years, the test has had minor modifications in its format and content _ such as the encouragement of calculator use in 1994 _ but nothing close to the most recent alteration.

The College Board _ the organization that administers the SAT _ approved the biggest change to the exam in its 76-year history last spring. Nonetheless, the effect of this change on Tufts' admissions policies will likely be minimal.

Assistant Director of Admissions David Brunk said that admissions policies would not change immediately. The University must first compare college grade point average (GPA) of students coming into Tufts with scores achieved under the new SAT format, a process that will take a minimum of five years.

The new changes, which will not go into effect until March of 2005, include the addition of an hour-long writing test made up of multiple choice questions and a 25-minute essay. The analogies section will be eliminated and replaced by more critical reading passages. Problems requiring application of Algebra II skills will be put in the math section in place of the current quantitative comparison questions.

The weight of the third section increases the "perfect score" from 1600 to 2400, and examinees will be given an additional half-hour in which to complete the SAT.

The improved SAT will better illustrate applicants' writing skills, which Dean of Admissions David Cuttino said is what "we're looking for" at Tufts. The new test will not, however, change the type of student that is accepted to Tufts or the importance of SAT scores in the admissions process, he said.

Students are not sure that the new format will make the lives of future applicants any easier. "A lot of kids see the SAT as a negative thing," prospective Tufts student Bridgid Dunn said. "People are afraid to apply to schools because of the SAT requirement."

Dunn, who was visiting Tufts yesterday, said that although she was not a fan of standardized testing, that the SAT is, "still a necessary requirement just because it is a standard common to everyone."

Tufts admissions echoed this sentiment. Scores are, "the only common denominator" by which to compare high school students, Brunk said. They also act as one of the only ways to compare Tufts students to students at other universities.

But Brunk called the scoring a "double-edged sword." While SAT scores are nice for the Admissions Office to have, their usefulness can be limited. Often there is a, "correlation between high SAT scores, high [household] income, and a high first semester GPA," Brunk said.

For Tufts, as for most other colleges, the SAT is only one of many characteristics considered by the admissions department. Other considerations include class rank, difficulty of schedule, GPA, recommendations, geographical diversity, ethnic diversity, extracurricular activities, legacy status, and AP test scores, to name a few. The SAT is "not nearly as important as the transcript," Brunk said.

While the scores are not a deciding factor in the admissions process, Tufts will not be dropping them from the application requirements any time soon. The University must use the SAT for the purpose of national ranking, Brunk said. If Tufts were to exclude SAT scores from the admissions process, its US News and World Report magazine ranking might fall.

The changes to the testing procedure were partly sparked by University of California (UC) President Richard Atkinson, who last year proposed dropping the SAT requirement from all UC applications because the current test measures only "undefined notions of aptitude or intelligence." He wanted a test to replace the SAT on the application _one that would better evaluate specific subject mastery.

The College Board receives 15 percent of its revenue from the state of California and the UC system, which consists of nine campuses and 130,000 undergraduates _the largest university system in the country.

Atkinson is pleased by the proposed SAT changes. "There is no perfect test, but this is a move in the right direction," he said in a recent press release.

Prospective Tufts student Quill Teal-Sullivan thought the SAT was just a hassle, no matter what the changes. "I don't really think they measure anything of importance," she said. "Just whether your family put you through a [SAT score improvement] course or not. I wouldn't want to take them again."

A second move that the College Board made recently was to discontinue the "flagging" of tests taken by disabled students. Students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia or ADD, can request to be given more time on the SAT. In the past, however, the disabled students' SAT scores were marked to inform colleges that time was added. The argument in favor of this change is that notification could discourage students from requesting extra time, for fear of admission's discrimination.

Currently at Tufts, disabilities flagging is noted in the application process, "but it is not used in the evaluation process," Brunk said