As some of you may have read, Baylor got itself into some hot water when it was revealed that the school paid already admitted students with book credits or scholarships if they retook the SAT and increased their score by 50 or 100 points.  Baylor did so to increase their overall SAT scores they report, and presumably, to thereby improve their ranking in U.S. News.  Many have chided the school for ethical impropriety or gaming the system.  It would seem that U.S. News should simply ban a school using scores after the student has been admitted.  But the real folly of the incentive program is its probable lack of success — the odds of a student moving more than the standard deviation without test preparation is highly unlikely, so as incentive programs go, this one is weak for the student, as the cost of preparation would outweigh the scholarship offered.  And figuring that most students won’t do the prep, they won’t get the score increase, so the whole program would have flopped anyway!!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 7:20 am and is filed under College Entrance Exams, For Parents, For Students. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.