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发帖数: 7996 | 1 申请大学居然还要看SAT考分，很不利于学生的diversity
Many high schoolers hoping to attend George Washington University in
Washington, D.C., one of the top private universities in the country,
breathed a sigh of relief this week.
GWU announced it will no longer require applicants to take the SAT or ACT.
The move comes after the school formed a task force to study the pros and
cons of going "test-optional." GWU attracts lots of high-achieving students
who do well on both exams, but the task force concluded that the school's
reliance on these tests was excluding some high-achieving students who
simply don't test well.
Of particular concern were low-income, minority students who don't even
bother to apply because their scores are too low.
GWU will still require pre-med and home-schooled students, as well as
athletes, to submit test scores, but, like many of the more than 800 other
four-year colleges and universities that were already test-optional, it
hopes its admissions criteria will now capture a more diverse pool of
students.
David Hawkins, head of research at the National Association for College
Admission Counseling, or NACAC, says the move to test-optional is
significant because of GWU's national reputation as a top, selective
institution.
NACAC's own research has found that some schools are considered "selective"
because of their lofty SAT or ACT average scores. But it's not at all clear
whether performance on those tests is a reliable predictor of future
academic success.
In response to the news, the nonprofit College Board defended the importance
of its SAT: "Overwhelming evidence shows that SAT scores and high school
GPA in combination are the best predictors of college success. Evidence also
shows that test-optional policies do not increase socio-economic and racial
diversity on college campuses — which is what these policies claim to
achieve."
The ACT, now more widely used than the SAT, has also argued that an A
student at one high school is not necessarily comparable to an A student at
another, more academically demanding school. In other words, tests like the
SAT and ACT can help institutions guard against grade inflation.
Paul Weeks, a senior vice president with ACT, says GWU's decision sounds
like a marketing ploy.
"I can't understand why a school would consider admitting a student without
a test score but not admit a student with a (low) test score," Weeks says.
The Long Debate
Last year, NPR was given exclusive access to a study that found that a
student's high school academic record, regardless of what school she
attended, is a far better predictor of college success than the SAT or ACT.
This first-ever study was conducted by William Hiss, the former dean of
admissions at Bates College in Maine. Bates has been test-optional since
1984. Hiss studied 33 test-optional schools — big and small, private and
public — then compared "non-submitters" to students who had submitted SAT
scores.
He found virtually no difference in college grades or graduation rates.
Students who did not submit their scores did just as well as those who did.
"By any statistical methodology the differences [between submitters and non-
submitters] are completely trivial," Hiss told NPR's Eric Westervelt.
The study supported what test-optional institutions have maintained for
years. The most reliable predictors of college success are a high school
student's GPA and the rigor of the courses taken.
Critics of the SAT and ACT have long argued that these tests are nothing
more than sorting tools that help institutions deal with large numbers of
applicants.
That's why George Washington University's decision to make the SAT and ACT
optional is important. With 25,000 students, it is now one of the largest,
most influential institutions in the country to declare itself "test-
optional."
Until now, most test-optional schools have been small and therefore more
adept at spending the time, money and energy to closely examine every
applicant's high school record, background and accomplishments in and out of
school — what GWU officials call more "holistic" criteria.
Is this the beginning of the end for the SAT and ACT? Probably not.
Filtering tens of thousands of applicants without the help of these
powerhouse tests is a daunting and expensive task for larger schools. And
most of the nation's best, most-selective institutions still rely on them.
But, with GWU adding its high-profile name to the list of testing naysayers,
other big schools will no doubt give the idea a second thought.
The Struggle To Breathe Life Back Into Empty SchoolsJuly 28, 2015
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