Don't Abandon the SAT

Over the past half-century, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) has become an integral part of American society. It has spawned a specialized industry of tutors, preparatory books, computer programs and vocabulary lists and has been responsible for the nervous breakdowns of millions of teenagers and their parents.

But the SAT is in danger of becoming only as important as that optional essay on college applications that most of us chose not to write. The University of California, which includes nine campuses and enrolls 166,000 students, is considering dropping the SAT as a pre-requisite for admission in response to the state's recent ban on affirmative action. A task force commissioned by the university has projected that continuing to use the SAT could cause Hispanic and black enrollment at its schools to fall by as much as 70 percent when the ban takes effect on next year's undergraduate first-year classes. Therefore, the task force has recommended that the university system consider students even if they have not taken the SAT.

Blacks and Hispanics have historically scored well below the national mean for the SAT. According to the College Board, the average score for blacks is 857; for Mexican-Americans, it is 909. The national average on the SAT is 1016. Asians and whites have averages of 1056 and 1052, respectively. The task force estimates that junking the SAT as a requirement will increase the pool of Latinos eligible for admission by 59 percent.

The task force's findings will undoubtedly intensify debates about whether the SAT deserves the respect it commands from college admission officers. For years, the test's critics have argued not only that it is a lousy measure of intelligence and predictor of academic success but also that it is culturally biased.

The critics are correct in that the SAT sometimes measures test-taking abilities more than intellectual ability. But the exam is not racially biased. It misjudges white, black and Hispanic high school students with an equal amount of imprecision. It is only discriminatory against those who do not speak and write standard English.

While I would never claim that standard American English is the best language, I will claim that knowledge of English is vital to achieving financial and work-related success in America. Universities are best able to educate students who speak it, and those who have mastered it are better able to compete in the American job market than those who have not. While America may be in the process of becoming a more diverse nation, English is still by far the most economically viable language.

Furthermore, the test is not biased against those who do not grow up drenched in "American culture." Nor does it place students whose first language is Spanish or Ebonics at an insurmountable disadvantage. Remember, according to the College Board, Asians score higher on the SAT than any other group, and English is the most difficult to learn for someone who speaks a language with neither German nor Latin roots.

Unless a better replacement can be found, colleges need the SAT to differentiate between applicants, especially in the age of grade inflation. The College Board reported that last spring 37 percent of the 1.1 million students who took the test prior to graduating in June had averages of A- or above in high school. Without the SAT, universities cannot judge these 400,000 applicants by one standard measure. Giving added weight to extra-curricular activities is certainly not the answer, especially in a time of trumped-up resumes and frivolous clubs and honor societies.

The SAT is also important because it is, sadly, the only requirement for admission on which applicants cannot misrepresent themselves. Many students cheat their way through high school, list clubs on their applications to which they never belonged and hire others to write their college essays. However, with the rare exception of a few football players, no one cheats on the SATs. The California Board of Regents surely understands that applicants would become even more indistinguishable from each other than they already are without the SAT. In fact, turning the college admissions process into a crap shoot is probably part of their rationale to discard it. Introducing more chance to the admissions procedure increases the chances black and Latino students have of being accepted into U.C. schools.

But should a school intentionally blur the academic distinctions between its applicants just to meet its dream of a perfectly diverse student body? This diversity-by-any-means-necessary approach to college admissions seems to relegate the measurement of academic merit to an afterthought. If the U.C. regents truly believe the SAT to be culturally biased, then they should look for a new gauge of academic achievement--not simply attempt to erase the current yardstick.

Alex M. Carter, a Crimson editor, is a sophomore living in Dunster House.