As I reported in an earlier post, the College Board has planned to add a new test, a miniature version of the PSAT, to its arsenal of tests.  ReadiStep would be given to eighth graders and have three 40 minute sections:  1 math, 1 verbal, 1 writing.  The level of difficulty of the test would be consistent with eighth grade expectations. The test will be available for use next fall.  It will be interesting to see a sample version of the test and measure exactly what level the College Board sees for eighth grade performance.

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!!!

The PSAT will be given in just one month — October 15 and 18 — across the country and here in St. Louis.  It is given to juniors as part of the National Merit qualifying process, but also to sophomores who want to see how they stand in performance on the SAT.

Many kids ask me why even bother taking the test if they know they cannot do well enough to qualify for National Merit.  I tell them that is not the point of the test.  Less than 1% of students qualify for National Merit, so the test is really not designed just for them.  It is given as a way to preview the SAT, to have a real test environment with the same style questions and time pressures.  Most sophomores or juniors have not taken a test of this difficulty or length.  So taking it in and of itself helps give the student insight into what the future holds with the SAT, and that student’s relative ability at that moment in time.

But taking the PSAT cold is not a good idea because it will give you a score lower than your actual potential and you will not be able to sort out errors due to lack of familiarity from errors due to concepts or time or other skills.  Knowing your actual baseline before you take the test will tell you how well (or not so well) you did when you get the actual results back.  The more preparation one does before the test, the better the read one has after taking the test.  Plus, any PSAT prep is also SAT prep.  Finally, the earlier a jump one gets on the PSAT, the earlier the SAT process can end or the longer one will have to prepare and test multiple times if that is the necessary road.

If you want more information of preparing for the PSAT, just drop me a note here.

U.S. News has a wonderful article about ways high school students can help focus their efforts to get into competitive colleges.  The article features a quote from Dr. Annalee Nissenholtz, head of college counseling at Horton Watkins.  I encourage everyone to read it, as it is one of the few articles I have seen that provides a wealth of accurate information about the college application process.

With regard to essays, a hot topic with seniors right now, the advice provided is quite good — when selling yourself in your essay, remember the key is sincerity and honesty.  An admissions officer can spot a phony person or essay in a heartbeat, and besides, you are trying to present a real person anyway!

Other information discussed with regard to SAT and ACT and AP — all good advice you can find me saying in this blog or on our website.

Bottom line…a thoughtful plan and due diligence can help anyone get to yes for college.  We have the plan, you bring the diligence!

The College Board released the scores of the class of 2008, and the scores remained the same as the previous year, on average — a 502 in critical reading and a 515 in math.  Writing came in at 494.

While one can be happy that scores did not dip as with the ACT, the actual averages are disturbing.  The SAT divides questions into three levels of difficulty:  easy, medium and hard.  If one aces all the easy and gets a few medium questions, one will be above the average in all three categories.  Consequently, far too many of those taking the test are not able to answer the easy questions.  Conclusion:  critical thinking and written expression skills are sorely lacking across the country for college-bound students.

Yes, according to this article in the Los Angeles Times, the College Board is currently field testing a PSAT that is tailored to 8th grade curriculum.  Currently, the ACT offers a test called EXPLORE for 8th graders that is a tailored version of the ACT.

Critics charge this is just about making more money for the College Board, competing with ACT for middle school kids, and adding one more test to already overtested youth.

Is this test a good idea?  I think it is a positive development.  We have learned that the more students become familiar with the test format of the SAT, the better they will perform because they understand the design and begin to think critically in these test situations.  I think introducing this test in elementary school would be an even better development, as it would make the higher-learning skills take a front and center position in kids’ minds, if not in their curriculum.  The SAT or other college admissions exams will not disappear anytime soon, so easing children into the exams seems better than throwing them into the cold deep end of the pool before they can swim.

This article in U.S. News offers six strategies geared to the new SAT policy that allows students to hide scores of certain SAT results and only present to colleges the ones the students would like them to see (presumably the highest of the bunch).

Some of the ideas are solid and ones that I have preached for years — start early and practice regularly and often.  Other advice I like a lot less.  I do not think taking the test ten times is a good idea just because a student can hide scores.  As the SAT knows well, without intervening help at improving the skills tested on the SAT, repeat testing is not going to result in more than a gross 50 point change in score, the margin of error for the test.  Further, knowing that is going to be the case, why keep taking a test and getting a poor score?  Is that going to build confidence or the belief that a student will never succeed?

Another odd suggestion — only apply to schools that do not make you disclose every one of your SAT test scores, even those you told the SAT to hide.  If a school is your dream or your perfect fit, why not still apply?  Better yet, why not develop a test strategy that limits the number of times you take the test but shows improvement, which will look good to a college admissions officer?

Bottom line…the acting strategic in hiding scores will not mean anything if the scores never go way up.  Plus, why build a college application around “hiding” and gamesmanship?  Integrity is a critical value to learn at every stage in life, and we are not teaching integrity by moving away from full disclosure.  I think the student who has the integrity and the courage and the honesty to tell me all of the scores and the story behind it would score more points in my admission matrix.  In the end, colleges take real people, young men and women who can no longer hide behind screened applications, scores, grades.  A pre-fab application will not show that human side that makes the difference.  I am always shocked at how many students, parents and professionals underestimate the awareness and expertise of the college admissions officer.

The College Board announced a new SAT score reporting policy.  Currently, when a student sends her scores to a college or university, the SAT sends every test score relating to that student.  Starting in March, 2009, students will now be able to select which scores they want a college or university to receive.

The impact of this change is monumental.  Up to now, a college would know if a student had taken the SAT more than two or three times and could discount later scores.  Also, a college would know if a student had several previous bad outings and one good score, or several good scores but one recent lousy score.  The selectively hiding of scores now strongly favors the student in putting her best score forward to colleges, while also making it harder for colleges to weigh the value of a particular score. 

The major corollary to this policy change is this:  take prep courses to improve your score and do not be afraid to retake the test!

Why the change?  I imagine that colleges are driven by reporting the best scores of applicants because it affects selectivity — if a college can report only the highest scores of every applicant, it makes their median SAT score balloon up, which makes it look like their entering class is super smart.  It seems that colleges want students to play the high score game so that everybody wins — the student picks the best scores and the school report the best scores.  Seems like win-win!  Whether that will be true remains to be seen — we will have to see how this plays out through the application process.

But the message is clear students — test often but prepare, because just retaking the test without actual preparation will not increase your score!

Another in our series, Ask Jason.

Dear Jason,

I am going into my junior year and my parents are already asking me about signing up for the SAT and the ACT.  I am a good student with good grades — why do I have to go through this whole standardized testing process?  Can’t a college see what they need to see from me by looking at my transcript?  What is the deal with these awful tests anyway?  What do they really measure, anything?  I do not like standardized tests and have not done well on them in the past.  Can you write me a note to get me out of these tests???

Signed,

Unstandard

Well Unstandard, I cannot give you a no-testing pass, but you certainly raise a very good point — why do colleges make you and hundreds of thousands of other juniors and seniors go through some long standardized tests that only determine whether you get into a great college or not?

The more competitive college, generally the greater the number of applications because more people want to go to the great school.  Students around the world apply, from many countries and thousands of high schools.  How can a college keep track of the quality of every high school?  Is an “A” or “H” at one school in the same class worth the same grade at a different school?  Years ago, when the SAT began, colleges often took students with not-so-great grades but solid connections.  Some colleges refused to take students of certain races or religions.  The merit movement urged the use of standardized tests to help assure that discrimination would not keep a well-qualified student out of a great college.  The belief in diversity is also in play — colleges should reflect the world in which we live, and students will become better citizens if they live with and interact with people of different races, religions and socioeconomic backgrounds.  In short, the whole SAT and ACT scenario today is the result of making a level playing field, creating a single metric to measure all applicants.

The need for a diverse group of students who made it to college because of merit seems fair and important.  But are the SAT and ACT the best way to do it?  Lots of people who have studied these tests (and way more who have not) have argued about this point for years.  Some say they do a great job predicting college success or at least validating your high school performance; other say they do a poor job predicting success.  I would say any test could be improved (the SAT went under a revamp a few years ago), but they will not go away because we need that fair playing field tool.  If we take away the tests, schools that admit only 15% of applicants will be accused of bias and prejudice all the time.  The admissions officers will be always on the defensive about their selection methods.  As long as schools have limited space available, people will be turned down.  Is it not better that schools have something to point to rather than say, “we just did not find you met our standards”?

I understand the frustration you and so many other students feel about standardized tests.  They are always subjective (even though we think they are objective) because someone is defining the standard.  The old SAT used to be much more demanding in vocabulary for instance, now it is less so.  When standards move, we wonder why.  In fact, whenver we meet a standard, we ask, “who says?”  Why should the College Board have so much power?  Good question.  Because someone has to?  We have an imperfect process that is a lot less imperfect today than 30 or 50 years ago.  College admissions officers are far more sensitive to diversity and building classes that stress merit and opportunity and minimize legacy or favoritism.  I think the best solution to the problem of standardization is to have more input on the standard — what should incoming freshmen know and how should a test or set of tests cover those skill areas?  If more people had input on the standard and the standard was more openly determined, more people would feel the process made more sense, felt more fair.  Perhaps that will happen…but in the meantime, see these tests as an opportunity to prepare and showcase your talent and give yourself more choices for college.

Thanks for the question!  If you have a question, please send it to me.

In a wonderful article on Slate, Manuela Zoninsein writes about the college entrance exam for China.  Called the Chinese SAT, it covers every subject ever studied from kindergarten to twelfth grade.  It lasts two days and determines whether a student can attend college, and if so, how prestigious.  The higher the score, the better the university, the better the job and career after graduation.  Over ten million students take this test each year, to fill a total of 5.7 million spots in all of China’s universities, only a fraction of which would be classed at the level of our elite universities.  Of course, the payoff is immense — entry into one of the elite schools guarantees career success.  Interestingly, the odds of getting into the top tier is not that different from getting into Harvard or Yale this year — but the guarantee that China provides is not present in the United States, as too many graduates of elite universities can struggle to find high-paying jobs, at least without going on to graduate school.

The big downside of the Chinese system, as with many European systems, is that individuals lack freedom of choice in careers.  If you test in one direction, you go that direction.  Such is the nature of centralized planning.

Do you think a test can be that exact to identify an entire career trajectory?  Even if it could, should that be how we determine entry into those careers?  What about self-actualization?  Is the need for the many greater than the will of the one (to twist a Star Trek phrase)?

Interesting and provocative questions.  Thoughts?