What an SAT score doesn't say

MY FIRST JOB as a high school teacher was troubling. I was just beginning my Jesuit training in the late 1970s when I was assigned to a local Catholic high school. The classes I taught had a single objective: raise students' math SAT scores. That this was part of the curriculum worried me. Wouldn't they do better with another year of real math instruction before they went on to college? But I did my best to drill my students in ways to tackle the specific SAT questions; and after a semester, their scores on average improved by more than 100 points.

I've been reflecting on those days since the commission convened by the National Association for College Admission Counseling to study the use of standardized testing in college admissions issued its report earlier this fall. Chaired by William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions and financial aid, the commission expressed serious reservations about the impact standardized testing has on the college admissions process.

The commission urged colleges to scrutinize how they actually use standardized test scores and called for a greater emphasis to be placed on students' high school curriculum and achievements. An overemphasis on standardized test scores, they observed, sends the wrong message about what is important in preparing for college, shifting the emphasis away from the substance of the high school curriculum, where it should be.

The commission also expressed a concern that "test scores appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity, and parental educational attainment."

In an age of $400-per-hour one-on-one SAT tutoring programs, standardized tests no longer function as the great leveler they were when they were first introduced some 50 years ago.

The recommendations of the commission provide further weight to decisions by, at latest count, more than 775 colleges and universities, including my institution, the College of the Holy Cross, to make standardized tests optional in the admissions process.

At Holy Cross we have admitted three classes since we made submission of SAT and ACT scores an optional part of the application. This was more a confirmation of existing practice than a major policy shift. For years before we officially became test-optional, we found that there were other far more telling indicators of how a student would perform and succeed in college.

Was the student taking the most challenging courses offered at his high school? Was she truly engaged by intellectual exploration? What was his class rank? We also used qualitative information from interviews, essays, recommendations, and accounts of outside activities to get a good sense of the person.

Becoming SAT-optional has been a positive experience and has sent a message to students that focusing on their high school work is more important than spending time (and sometimes considerable money) prepping for a test. The conversations our admissions counselors have with prospective students are richer, more interesting, and more sophisticated. They ask about the academic opportunities within our undergraduate curriculum rather than "what's your average SAT score?"

Some people disagreed with our test-optional announcement, of course. The most immediate and unfounded response was that Holy Cross was lowering its standards. Critics perceived that dropping SATs would lead to our accepting less-qualified students.

In reality, Holy Cross became more selective. Our announcement sent the message that we are interested in who our applicants are and the array of talents and interests they could offer the college. The result has been a big increase in applications, coming from very gifted and highly motivated students.

I encourage more colleges to take a critical look at how they use SAT and ACT scores, as the NACAC report recommended. With that, I hope today's high school students understand two things: colleges care about what they are learning in the classroom, and a score on a single test is not the sole indicator of what the future holds.

Michael C. McFarland, S.J., is president of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.