20 years after dropping the test, the college says it’s getting better applicants
Chart: Academic performance at BatesBy ERIC HOOVER
Milwaukee
Twenty years ago, Bates College told students that they did not have to submit SAT scores for admission. This month it told academe that the policy has been a boon to the small, liberal-arts college.
At the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, William C. Hiss, Bates’s vice president for external affairs, presented the findings of a 20-year study of the effects of the Maine college’s SAT-optional policy.
The report said there was virtually no difference between the academic performances of applicants who had submitted SAT scores and those who had not. The two groups also ended up with the same graduation rates.
The study, the first of its kind, was the latest volley from critics of the use of the SAT in admissions. Mr. Hiss, a former dean of admissions at Bates, used the findings to challenge the test’s accuracy as a predictor of applicants’ success in college.
“This discussion is about holding on obsessively ... to something that doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
One part of the Bates study found that from 1985 to 1999, the overall grade-point average was 3.11 among students who had submitted SAT scores, compared with 3.06 among those who had not. Between 1990 and 1999, the graduation rate for nonsubmitters, 86.7, was 0.1 percent higher than that for submitters.
The study also found that the SAT-optional policy -- which has nearly doubled Bates’s applicant pool -- had helped the college attract a more-diverse student body over the past 20 years. Mr. Hiss cited increased application rates from several groups, including female, minority, financially needy, foreign, and learning-disabled students.
“Do you get better students when you double the applicant pool?” Mr. Hiss asked. “Of course you do.”
About a third of the students in each entering class do not submit standardized-test scores to Bates.
Minor Differences
The study found that the academic ratings assigned to students by the Bates admissions office were highly accurate, both for applicants who had submitted scores and for those who had not.
Forty-nine percent of Hispanic applicants and 45 percent of black applicants did not submit test scores, while 30 percent of white students opted not to do so.
Thirty-five percent of female applicants did not submit test scores, compared with 25 percent of male applicants.
There were only slight differences between the majors that the two groups chose at Bates, although nonsubmitters were more likely to major in fields that emphasize creativity.
In general, the careers that submitters and nonsubmitters picked showed modest differences. However, students who did not submit SAT scores with their undergraduate applications were less likely to go on to apply to graduate and professional programs that require standardized tests, like law, medicine, and business.
In fields in which advancement does not depend on standardized tests, including finance, students from both groups were represented equally.
“The large social-ethics piece in all this,” Mr. Hiss said, “is whether the testing is truncating pools of applicants who would be successful if admitted.”
Amy Schmidt, executive director of higher-education research at the College Board, a nonprofit organization that owns the SAT, said the findings contradicted national data on the correlation between SAT scores and college success.
According to a forthcoming report from the College Board and the Educational Testing Service, which administers the test, among students with the same grade-point average in high school fewer than 14 percent of those who scored 1000 or lower on the SAT earned at least a 3.5 grade-point average in college, while over half of those who scored at least 1200 did so. More than three-quarters of those who scored 1400 or above earned at least a 3.5 grade-point average in college, according to the study.
Of the SAT-optional policy at Bates, Ms. Schmidt said: “If this is working for them and they’re doing very well with it, then that’s what they should do. What I object to is the implication that just because it works for them it is going to work for everybody.”
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AT BATESBates College’s 20-year study found virtually no difference in the grade-point averages and graduation rates of students who had submitted SAT scores compared with those who had not.
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| Those who submitted SAT scores
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| Those who did not
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| Average cumulative GPA’s
(entering classes of 1985 to 1999) | Graduation rates
(entering classes of 1990 to 1999) |
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SOURCE: Bates College
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http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 51, Issue 8, Page A32
