Wake Forest SAT Policy

This summer, Wake Forest University decided to drop the SAT as a requirement for prospective students. Smaller liberal arts colleges have been doing away with the SAT requirement for years; but Wake Forest is one of the top national universities (always ranking below #30 on top university lists), and it's the first time an institution that prestigious on the ranking list has dropped the requirement. So for that reason alone, it's generated buzz.

According to an article from Inside Higher Ed (http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/27/wake), the SAT-optional policy can work for smaller liberal arts colleges because of their smaller applicant pool. But the most competitive schools use the SAT as a way to help eliminate applicants — they receive so many applications, one more tool (which isn't perfect, of course, but certainly valuable) to aid the process is sound.

Wake will still allow applicants to submit scores if they want do so. I find it interesting that they will be asking all accepted applicants who took the SAT to submit scores so that Wake can examine the impact of the new policy, which includes studying the success levels of those who had chosen not to submit their scores in the admissions process.

Part of the whole revamping of the admissions process is the increased emphasis on the student interview (and virtual interviews will be accepted in the event the student can’t visit the school — although why a student would want to apply to a school he/she hadn’t visited doesn’t make much sense). Martha Allman, director of admissions, said that the interview will be an important factor, as well as an “expanded written portion of the admissions application. We will also view the high school curriculum and performance with even greater scrutiny.”

It’s smart that Wake will be trying to better understand what a given high school rank means and the rigor of a student’s classes, because different high schools vary so much in terms of class quality (and material difficulty) and even grading standards. If they really scrutinize the rigor of classes a student takes, a 4.0 GPA at one school may be considered a higher achievement because of the strenuous curriculum than a 4.0 GPA at another school.

But why say that high school grades are worthy to be considered screening tools, and the SAT isn't? The SAT actually levels the playing field for students, something high school grades don't do, since it's a standardized test. Unlike the difficulty in comparing students from varied grading system backgrounds, it's relatively easy to compare how students do on the uniform SAT. The SAT and high school grades are both necessary; having more information to go by is not a worse thing.

SAT critics say that doing well on the SAT doesn't reflect intellect or ability to succeed; it just means you take tests well. So by that logic, all tests, even in school, become suspect; a kid who takes a test in chemistry class and gets a D should be able to say, “This didn’t measure my knowledge; it just means I don’t take tests well.” Test-taking ability is part of it, but the standardized test also measures what you already know across a variation of subjects. (Besides, who doesn’t need good test-taking skills in college?)

I didn’t love the SAT and I didn’t relish taking it. It’s not a perfect tool by any means, and it shouldn’t be the only screening tool (extracurricular activities, volunteer work, essays, high school grades and college prep. classes, the ACT, recommendations, and even interviews are important), but it is valuable as an additional tool for competitive colleges to sort through thousands of applications. It just makes sense for a large university to use a measure of standardized testing for narrowing down applications. I’m not saying a low score on the SAT means you can’t go on to be successful in life, of course. But what I do agree with is that the SAT is useful in the college admissions context, particularly for competitive schools — for helping college admissions officers decide what students will likely be capable of handling their college’s quality of education.

And besides, if you’re going to decry the SAT’s reliability to predict success and measure knowledge, why not question the reliability of grades (mentioned earlier — different standards of grading at different schools), essays (teachers helping students write them), and the other screening tools? What's the point of getting rid of just one such screening tool? If you forgo using one, why not the others?

I think Wake will have a harder time with choosing which applicants to accept, despite their increasing the number of admissions officers and devoting more time to examining applications, without the SAT as a tool to show what a student knows. The SAT is a relatively objective tool that delivers an obvious score for the school’s consideration; but an interview is more subjective — factors such as a student’s timidity and the interviewer’s demeanor all come into play. Yes, students could study and practice possible SAT questions; but they can also rehearse for possible interview questions. Some students could claim they don’t take tests well; other students could say they don’t interview well. Why rely on one tool and not the other, too?

But Wake says it wants diversity in the student body, and it’s saying that the SAT is biased against certain socioeconomic groups — so by scrapping the SAT as mandatory, Wake thinks they will attract more diversity. But they’ve also acknowledged that educational levels and socioeconomic status go hand in hand. However, other tools they don't want to forgo — high school grades, essays — are also tied to both education and socioeconomic status.

I don’t have a problem with Wake trying to expand their campus diversity. (One helpful measure to increase diversity would be to start giving significantly better financial aid packages.) But I don’t know how removing the SAT without replacing it with a tool that is even more objective and an accurate predictor of college success (as stated before, high school grades and interviews aren't such tools) is going to help anyone, including the hardworking, poor applicants that the school believes aren't being fairly served by taking the SAT. I think the main point that Wake has missed is that if you're looking to expand diversity in a school but keep the standard of academic excellence, then the problem does not lie merely in standardized testing. The root of the problem lies in the social fabric and educational system itself. Education is tied to socioeconomic status, and so methods of increasing the educational quality for students from less privileged backgrounds need to be emphasized throughout the country. Critics are debating too much about the quality of the SAT as a college success predictor and not focusing enough on raising educational levels across all socioeconomic groups and increasing high school and college graduation rates.