Last Monday the New York Times ran an article about the SATs and ACTs.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling (known informally as NACAC) convened a commission of college admission officers under the leadership of Bill Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard. The group studied the role of SAT and ACT exams in college admission decisions and its recommendations encouraged institutions to consider making these test optional for their applicants.

“It would be much better for the country,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said in an interview, “to have students focusing on high school courses that, based on evidence, will prepare them well for college and also prepare them well for the real world beyond college, instead of their spending enormous amounts of time trying to game the SAT.”

Colleges use these tests because over time they have demonstrated that they are valid indicators of a student’s academic success in the first semester of college (and to a lesser extent they predict second semester success). Recent criticism of the tests has pointed out that test results reflect differences in the socio-economic backgrounds, race/ethnicity, and educational background of the test takers.

The growing prevalence of test preparation programs has exacerbated the effects of the uneven socioeconomic playing field. In addition test preparation, even if the gains they bring are only modest, can undermine the validity of the tests as predictors of academic performance in college.

Two quick reactions to this article:

Harvard last year took action and eliminated their early admission programs, partly because of their perceived socioeconomic biases. Are they soon to drop their requirements for SATs and ACTs? Could they join with Bates College and others who have already made the tests optional?

If the admission tests used for the past 50 years are no longer used, what will take their place? Colleges and universities could take advantage of the research done by psychologist Robert Sternberg, currently at Tufts.

Dr. Sternberg has worked with high schools, colleges, and professional schools on identifying some of the qualities associated with academic success. Among the predictors that he has identified are:

• confidence (but not over-confidence)
• a strong sense of controlling one’s own success
• creative, flexible intelligence

Sternberg and his academic partners have developed tests and measures of these qualities, and if these can have their validity and non-discriminatory nature established, they could provide a good balance to the use of AP, IB, and SAT subject test scores in the admission process.