Colleges
ignore new SAT essay
47% don't count results
Sunday, November 20, 2005 • BY KATHLEEN O'BRIEN •
Star-Ledger Staff
High school students obsessing about the
new writing section of the SAT college placement test may
not like the answer to this question:
How many four-year colleges are ignoring
scores on the new section when reviewing admission
requests?
Almost half.
"We did it for nothing," said Brenton Be,
a senior at Morris Hills High School after he emerged
recently from the 3-hour 45-minute test -- now longer than
admissions tests for business and law schools.
The numbers come from a new survey of 374
colleges and universities by Kaplan Inc., the
test-preparation company. On top of the 47 percent of
colleges ignoring the new section, the survey found an
additional 22 percent placing less value on the writing
section than the two older sections. And just 15 percent
said the new section was being valued equally; the rest of
the schools said they were undecided.
"This is a brand new test. There is no
history on it," said Sandra Lanman, a spokeswoman for
Rutgers University, which isn't using writing scores in
admissions for incoming freshmen.
"It's so new," said Marvin Sills,
director of undergraduate admissions at Rowan University,
which also intends to disregard the score this
year.
"There are good reasons to wait and see,"
said Norbert Elliot, professor of English at New Jersey
Institute of Technology and author of "On a Scale: A Social
History of Writing Assessment." He is not surprised many
colleges are balking.
At NJIT, Elliot said the school plans to
collect writing scores from applicants, then compare them
with actual performance once next fall's freshmen complete
an introductory composition class. Only then, he said, will
the school be able to judge the SAT's validity in predicting
college success.
Lanman said Rutgers also plans to match
writing scores against college performance before
considering them in admissions decisions. Princeton
University and Stevens Institute of Technology also are
taking a wait-and-see approach.
TOO NEW TO TELL
The old SAT had two sections, math and
verbal, and each was scored on a scale of
200-800.
The new version has three sections --
math, critical reading (verbal) and writing -- and each is
scored the same way, making a perfect score now 2,400. The
new math section also has tougher algebra questions, while
the critical reading section dropped the multiple-choice
analogies. Nationally, nearly 1.5 million college-bound
seniors took the test last year, 85,000 of them from New
Jersey.
"If someone gets a 580 (on the writing
section), we have no idea what that score means," said
Daniel Gallagher, dean of university admissions at Stevens.
"It could be at the top. It could be at the
bottom."
The National Collegiate Athletic
Association -- the organization that monitors academic
eligibility for thousands of athletes -- also is holding
back until it knows more.
Michael Benero, a senior at Mount Olive
High School, said he learned about the institutional
reluctance to use the new score while touring eight campuses
last summer.
"Every single one of them said they're
not paying any attention to it," he said. "I was kind of
annoyed because I felt good about how I did. And to spend
the money and to put in the time and have it count for
nothing, it makes you say, 'Why did they have
it?'"
The answer lies in California, where, in
2001, the president of the state's sprawling public
university system proposed abandoning the SATs altogether.
Had California pulled out of the national test, the College
Board, which administers it, would have lost its biggest
customer.
In response, the College Board vowed to
update the test and add a writing component. The new test
debuted to great fanfare in March, but preliminary results
weren't released until the end of the summer, too late for
most colleges to digest.
To Benero's father, who was waiting to
pick up his son outside the testing site in Morris County,
that scenario would be unacceptable in the business
world.
"It's like having a product release
without marketing the product. It's like saying, 'Here's a
new potato chip -- let us know if it's going to sell,'" he
said.
Actually, many of the wait-and-see
colleges are following the lead of the College Board itself,
said spokeswoman Caren Scoropanos. Until there is a year of
results to analyze, they won't be able to compare the new
test with the old. However, the Board's Web site gives
students no hint that this year's writing test may not count
at many institutions.
The reluctance of so many colleges to use
the new numbers doesn't surprise Robert Franek, author of
the Princeton Review's "Best 361 Colleges" guide. Given that
predictable result, he said, the College Board should have
been more forthcoming earlier.
"There's a lot of indecision -- and that
isn't fair to students," he said. "They're having to act in
the dark. They have no benchmark of any kind --
nothing."
As to the College Board's claim it has
suggested delaying use of the writing score, he said, "I can
confidently say that's not what I've heard at
all."
The picture is further confused because
some universities -- including Harvard and the entire
California system -- are using writing scores.
"We always think more information is
better," said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, dean of admissions at
Harvard.
WON'T BE IGNORED
The Princeton Review Web site
(www.princetonreview.com) allows colleges to indicate how
they are handling the writing score, although some give that
information only at campus visits. The Web site also
contains the testing company's estimate of each college that
is likely to target writing scores.
Admissions departments will see all three
scores, putting them in the same quandary as a jury
instructed to disregard stricken testimony: How can
admissions personnel remain unswayed by a particularly high
or low score?
"You can't tell me that when they're
sifting through so many applications, there isn't some
implication of a high or low score. It's just human nature,"
said Greg Youngman, director of pupil personnel services for
the Bernards Township school district.
Indeed, 44 percent of the colleges
answering a survey by Kaplan said they would use the essay
score to verify or reinforce existing information about a
borderline applicant.
At Rider University in Lawrenceville,
Dean of Enrollment Susan Christian said the writing score
won't count for admissions, only for placement in freshman
writing classes. However, she acknowledged unusually high or
low scores would probably get noticed.
A high score "will only weigh in their
favor," she said, while a low score "would maybe run up a
red flag." That red flag would not doom an applicant, but it
might cause reviewers to take a closer look at a school
transcript.
Some colleges will use the actual essay
for a different purpose -- to detect cheaters. The writing
score has two components: multiple-choice questions on
grammar and a 25-minute essay.
Admissions officials who suspect a
student may have had too much outside help composing his or
her application essay may view the SAT essay for comparison.
The Kaplan survey showed 58 percent of colleges intend to
use the essay to smoke out cheaters.
That possibility might further shock the
high school seniors who are guinea pigs for the expanded
test that is leaving them hungry, tired and $41.50 lighter
in the pocket.
Ultimately, Youngman said, the seniors
feel slightly used because "they're being tested and they're
not getting the value from it."
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
|