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By Chris Thompson

For college-bound students, scoring high on the SAT has always been imperative to getting admitted into universities and colleges of stature. Admissions offices traditionally weigh SAT scores as one of the predominant factors in offering acceptance letters to students. And though that’s still the case for many elite universities, more higher ed institutions are taking the SAT and ACT off the criteria list for admission.

The most recent addition to the list of “test optional” institutions is the prominent Ithaca College, which announced that it would abandon test score requirements for admissions last month.

Ithaca College, averaging 12,000 yearly applicants, will now base an applicant’s ability on predictors other than SAT or the ACT test scores. The college has been rethinking standardized tests for some time, according to the vice president of Enrollment and Communication Eric Maguire. Not only do these tests fail to give a truly accurate assessment of a student’s ability, but they also bar diverse range of students from applying, he says.

“Standardized test scores add remarkably little to our ability to predict a student’s success beyond what their high school GPA and course schedule already tell us,” Maguire claims. “We believe our new test optional policy better aligns with our holistic and careful reviews of student applications. We also believe the policy will encourage more students to consider Ithaca College and help further diversify our applicant pool.”

Though Ithaca is perhaps the most prominent institution to abandon standardized testing as a key element in the admissions process, the test optional movement, as it’s called, has been around for more than 40 years. It began in the late 1960s, when alternative schools like Vermont’s Burlington College rejected standardized testing – or even letter grades. Civil rights groups posited that standardized tests harbor a cultural and racial bias, and that they screen out qualified students who might be unfamiliar with certain cultural assumptions. For instance,  students who know little about credit cards will be hard pressed to answer questions about interest rates.

In 1985, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing – or FairTest – was formed to advocate for a more holistic and concentrated look at a student’s qualifications. The organization initially focused on unconscious racial bias built into the SAT and ACT content, but has since expanded its critique to denounce the standardized testing regimen more generally.

“They’re incredibly imprecise,” says FairTest spokesman Robert Schaeffer. “They under-predict for women and over-predict for men, for example. And they’re highly coachable, which gives kids who are already likely to do well another leg up.”

The movement got a big boost in 2001, when Richard Atkinson, the president of the University of California system, proposed abandoning the SAT as a requirement for admission. “America’s overemphasis on the SAT is compromising our educational system,” he said in a speech to the American Council on Education.

The UC Board of Regents never adopted Atkinson’s suggestion, but since then, more and more colleges have adopted “test optional” admissions programs. Many have adopted the system used by the Lewis & Clark College of Arts and Sciences, which went test optional in 1990. Most applicants still offer SAT scores, but those who don’t may submit a portfolio of a grade point average, a sample of math tests and science laboratory reports, and analytical writing samples; teacher evaluations are mandatory.

“It takes students more time to submit a portfolio, and it certainly takes more effort,” says Lisa Meyer, the dean of admissions at Lewis & Clark. “It’s a lengthier process and it’s a more thorough process.”

Nevertheless, Meyer understands why more universities don’t adopt a test-optional policy. Smaller colleges like Lewis & Clark have a smaller number of applicants – roughly 6,500 every year — and the time and staff needed to more thoroughly review applications. According to FairTest’s Robert Schaeffer, only 850 colleges offer some sort of test optional review process. And of those, according to a review of the list on FairTest’s website, most are either vocational colleges like the DeVry Institute, Yeshiva schools, or small liberal arts colleges like Lewis & Clark.

That’s why Ithaca College’s decision is so important. This year, the college reviewed more than 12,000 applications. If Ithaca can assess this many candidates without the SAT, maybe the test could be optional for more than the boutique colleges of America.

Dan Foy

Test prep is a massive, multi-billion dollar industry. That’s no surprise, considering the significance we place on testing. Say what you want about SATs and GREs and MCATs failing to fully represent a student’s skills or college readiness. Say what you want about schools looking at other factors when deciding who to accept. Tests still matter. And parents and schools spend a lot of money in order to prepare students to do well.

Debbie Stier has been thinking a lot about this, especially in relation to her high-school age son. Last summer, the two of them agreed to take practice tests together, and it launched her first SAT flashback.

Stier didn’t do well when she took the test back in 1982, and her score hampered her efforts to get into certain universities — and she doesn’t want her kids to have those same restrictions.

But Stier decided to do something else, too: She’s going to study alongside her son. She’s going to retake the SAT. And she’s going to get a perfect score.

She made this vow at the beginning of the year, and she’s chronicling her efforts nearly on a daily basis on The Perfect Score Project blog. Compared to her baseline score of the test she took in January, she plans to retake the SAT each time it’s officially offered (that’s seven four-hour tests in total).

Each month, Stier is trying out a new methodology or service. So far, she’s taken College Board and Kaplan courses (in both online and in book formats). She’s also tried watching Khan Academy videos. Next month, she’s going to sign up for Grockit, and she plans to eventually hire individual tutoring services as well.

It’s been almost 30 years since Stier first took the SAT, and even if her scores had once been stellar, time chips away at our test-taking skills and at our mastery of math and vocabulary. Having worked in the publishing industry, Stier wasn’t too concerned about the latter. But brushing up on — and learning — the necessary material to ace the math portion of the test is another thing altogether.

Perfect Score Project

She’s teaching herself primarily, with some support from online material and books. And she has her son to help her too, she says.

True, she’s learning a lot about her own knowledge and learning process. But that teaching and learning relationship with her son might be the most important lesson here.

“I have a weird understanding what he’s going through,” she says, noting that she’s recognized how hard it is for him to carve out the time for studying, particularly after an already full day of school and homework. Describing her own limited “think hours,” she says that the Perfect Score Project has given her a lot of insight into what teens have to go through in order to make time for something that is notoriously boring.

By going through the study process with her son, she says she’s found a way to keep both of them motivated. They study together and run through practice tests together. They help each other troubleshoot wrong answers. Comparing scores on quizzes is akin to Scrabble she says, as the two of them engage in a friendly competition. “That’s the most powerful message,” she says, “work with your kid.”

But as it’s about her own quest for a perfect score on the SAT, Stier is paying attention to more than just studying alongside her son. Stier is monitoring her own learning and progress like a hawk. She’s also able to recognize that she studies better with books and learns better when she handwrites things than she does with computer-mediated studying and test-taking.

Book: I’m Excited.  Can’t wait.

Online Video: Dread.  Drudgery.  How much longer does this go on.

One exception to the video versus book preference: When I need a solution, I don’t feel the same “video dread.”  I’m happy to go in, learn what I need to, then leave.

She interviews herself about the experience.

Q. Does your son feel more pressure to get the perfect score now that you are doing this?

A. I wish.  No, he doesn’t.  That said, he has become more interested in the SATs now that I’ve climbed into the trenches with him.  In fact, he said to me last night “Mom, when can we do SAT work again?” (I swear to you.  This is an honest to god quote from April 10, 2011)

Stier speaks out about unsatisfactory experiences with online test prep courses, for example, when teens would likely remain quiet.

You can’t get to the answers until you finish the entire (and extremely long, I might add) “quiz.” When you finally get the answers, they come without the questions.  I realize that memory starts going in your 40s, but can anyone remember question #2 by the time they finish #50?

She’s approaching all of this with a great deal of self-reflection, a depth of analysis and a list of demands that a teenager studying for the SATs would unlikely have.

So when she aces the SAT test — and I’m sure she will — it won’t just be a matter of what Stier has mastered. It’s also what the rest of us might be able to learn about the world of test prep as well.