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SATs and the UNC system

Last modified on 2008-06-20 03:39:29 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

REGIONAL/STATEWIDE(6.02.08)-Wake Forest University announced a week ago that it was doing away with mandatory SAT scores as a factor in its admissions process.

The SAT - now called the “SAT Reasoning Test” - has been widely criticized as an inaccurate and sometimes biased predictor of success at the college level.

Wake Forest joins a small but growing list of institutions that have chosen to reduce the test’s influence on admissions.

Western Carolina University Admissions Director Alan Kines came to Cullowhee from a long career run among independent schools in the northeast. He knows the arguments against the SAT, and is sympathetic to them. But the crux of the issue, he indicates, is practicality:

“No, the UNC system has no plans to move beyond standardized tests as a qualifier for admission to any of its campuses,” he said earlier today. “And it is very doubtful that this will happen in my lifetime, I’m willing to bet. As a system, the University needs standardized metrics with which to base performance. The SAT is the perfect such metric, even though its ultimate reliability as a predictor of academic performance in college is highly contested. And there is good science to tell us why the College Board doesn’t call it an “assessment” or “aptitude” test anymore!”

Kines went on to tout the idea of admissions decisions made on the basis of an integrated learning portfolio with selected SAT II scores.

“But for a school like Western, and a system like UNC, that seems impractical at this time,” he said.

University of North Carolina assistant provost and director of admissions Steve Farmer held forth on the subject in the Raleigh News and Observer late last week.

Read an article from National Public Radio (2007) here. Read about the organization Fairtest, which opposes standardized testing, here. The College Board responds to criticism of its SAT Reasoning Test here. Another angle from Gerald Bracey in the Huffington Post here.