After last month's Zimbabwe revelation, some might have thought that the University is the greediest non-profit in Princeton, N.J. Nice to know that the cross-town College Board is giving Nassau Hall a run for its money.
The College Board announced last month that college applicants will soon be permitted to pick and choose which SAT scores to send to colleges. The new policy, called "Score Choice," is scheduled to take effect in March. The College Board claims that Score Choice will "reduce student stress and improve the test-day experience."
Right. Because if students have no incentive against taking the SAT every month until they bank a 2400, their stress will be reduced. That's logic worthy of a 1400. On the new SAT. And we're supposed to believe that the purportedly non-profit College Board doesn't have profits in mind when making this sort of decision.
Let's do a little analysis of how much extra money the College Board will receive. Say there are 2 million students applying to colleges each year, and 1.5 million of them take the SAT. Assume that on average each of those students takes the SAT one more time, at a cost of $45. That would mean $67.5 million in extra revenue each year.
On the bright side, that's much more than the $1.5 million the College Board says it needs to restore the AP Italian exam. Maybe they'll be persuaded to restore it. Or maybe they'll follow the University's example and sit on their millions instead.
The College Board is allowing universities to choose whether or not they'll accept Score Choice. Hopefully, for the sanity of our country's high school students, the University will join Stanford, UPenn and others in refusing to accept it.
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4 comments:
Indeed, now there is no reason not to take the SAT as many times as possible.
Assuming that the average student will take the SAT once more because of a slight change in the way scores are reported? Yeah right!
Maybe the average student applying to the top 5% of schools (Princeton, for example) would be moderately more inclined to take the test again.
Most students (90%+) in the country take the SAT once, and most still will. The revenue difference will be negligible.
score choice is back! if anyone in the class of '09 took the sat I or sat II their high school freshman year (school year 2001-2002), they still had the option of score choice (this year was the last year of score choice). this is not a new phenomenom. perhaps ets is feeling the pinch of the economy too.
Your points a good one but facts matter too. College Board is in NY, not Princeton Twp. ETS is local, but that's actually Lawrence Twp. If you don't do your homework on that stuff, I can't trust your numbers.
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