Introducing the new and not-so-improved SAT

As if the cold dark door wasn’t ominous enough. Walking in, sounds of furious pencil-on-paper scratching and the yells of middle aged Korean women bombarded me. My gut told me that this was definitely not a happy place. But, this unhappiest-place-on-earth was where I was going to spend the majority of my summer, so I buckled down and walked deeper into the frigid prep center.Once I reached the counter I received my 2000 vocabulary flashcards for the 19 sentence completion questions on the SAT. Then I was reassured that the thousands of dollars my parents were spending would be put towards a 300-400 point boost in my score — that is, if I actually did the work. Then, just to make me feel even better, I was told that I should have started SAT prep classes as far back as middle school if I wanted to get my goal score (which was 2200 or above). Most importantly, they told me that a good SAT score was my ticket to college and that this program was one of the very few ways to get that ticket.But what does the SAT actually test? According to the College Board’s website, the SAT tests “what [students] already know,” and to some extent this is true. Sure, it tests mathematics, writing and critical reading skills. But I’m positive school never taught me that an anathema was a person you detested.Students everywhere pay thousands of dollars for a summer of preparatory classes at Elite, Revolution, Kaplan, etc. And those who don’t have the resources to pay for this get left behind in the dust. When a test that’s supposed to “give everyone a fair chance,” as stated by the College Board, becomes a game of expensive prep classes it’s no longer a test of intelligence but of affluence.In 2001, Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California, proposed dropping the SAT as a requirement for admission for this very reason.If every student who took the notorious test was able to afford the same resources, then maybe the test could be called a true measure of a student’s aptitude. But the numbers don’t lie: my lowest and first score was an 1830. By the time I had finished Elite’s rigorous program, my highest score, achieved on a released College Board SAT, was a 2300.If I honestly ask myself, “Would I have been able to reach that score without the costly classes?”, the answer is a resounding “no.”Recently, the College Board has attempted to combat these glaring flaws with changes that will come into effect in April of 2016. With an optional essay based around analyzing someone else’s argument rather than making your own, a complete removal of the feared Sentence Completion section which includes vocabulary from hell and a focus on things students actually learn in school, the test no longer seems so elitist (no pun intended).But, in all honesty, this is just the College Board’s way of recognizing one problem, but hiding another: scores from the SAT don’t really help out admissions offices very much.While the scores tell how good a student is at taking the SAT, admissions officers have a more accurate measure of aptitude: GPA. To analyze the relationship between high school GPA, SAT scores and college freshman grades, the University of California conducted a four year study of over 77,000 students in 2001. A student’s SAT score was in the end the least significant factor of college performance; the scores only removed 0.1% variance from predicted freshman grades.So pretty much, if a student’s GPA is known, the value of knowing a student’s SAT score becomes trivial. According to the College Board, “the redesigned SAT will reflect the work students do in class.” Isn’t that what a GPA is for?The initial purpose of the test was to measure aptitude, inherent ability. But the test no longer functions when that “inherent ability” is boosted by prep classes and money — these factors’ advantages may be lessened by the new changes to the SAT, but not altogether eliminated.Let’s not kid ourselves, here. Elite, Kaplan, Revolution and the Princeton Review will catch on soon enough and redesign their program to help students with the new-and-not-so-improved SAT. Despite promises of a test that is fairer because it will be based off of school-learned knowledge, there will always be students (albeit a smaller segment) who can pay their way through the SAT and straight into the hands of admissions officers.As the University of California showed us, responsible decisions can be made based solely on a student’s GPA without the help of the SAT. But even the makers of the test concede this: according to the College Board, “SAT scores should only be used in combination with other relevant information to make responsible decisions about students.”So why keep a test that is both unfair and, for all intents and purposes, useless?