Friday, May 30, 2008

Test time


Here's a piece on colleges moving away from the SAT.

I don't see this as being a wide-spread trend; schools still need a metric to compare students and I'd say that the SAT probably does better than most give it credit for. Note also that having these schools making the SAT arbitrary won't in an way reduce the number of students that actually take it; further, I'd imagine that reporting the score is optional and, as such, imposes an effective signaling mechanism through whether you choose to reveal your score or not. These are also small schools (though Wake Forest has over 4,000 undergrads, which is moderately sized) that likely place more emphasis on the full portfolio of a student, so the SAT didn't carry as much weight anyway. The value of the signal could well be stronger than the information from requiring the score. Large institutions still need a quicker way to judge a student and, rightly or wrongly, the SAT provides this nicely.

For what it's worth, I'd be willing to bet that of the TPS regulars, Dana or Tom Johnson top the SAT list...

1 comment:

danarch said...

Tom did very well, I can tell you that much. I, on the other hand, had to rely on the rest of "my portfolio" to get into CMC, including my essay on why DOMA (defense of marriage act) was bad. You should ask Tom what he got on the GMAT. He is very proud of that one. =)