ND and SMC will keep admissions test
By NICK SWEEDO
News Writer
Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California school system, recently issued a proposal that the school drop the Scholastic Aptitude Test from its list of admissions requirements. This move by the country's largest university system could potentially start a ripple effect at other universities and signal the death knell of the SAT.
Both Notre Dame and Saint Mary's, however, have no plans at this time to stop using the SAT in the admissions process.
"This kind of change will not happen overnight,"said Mary Pat Nolan, admissions director at Saint Mary's. "We would have to do research before any change is made."
Rita Scheidler, Notre Dame's admissions counselor in charge of the California region, said the University does not intend to follow the University of California's lead anytime soon.
"It [the SAT] is one way that we can gauge students across the nation against each other," Scheidler said.
Notre Dame admissions officers do take into account the flaws that the SAT has, and the test is only one of six criteria that the officials look at, Scheidler said.
Scheidler explained that each student is judged on three academic criteria — class rank, SAT and high school transcript — with the transcript given greatest weight. The admissions office also looks at three non-academic criteria — teacher evaluations, essays and extracurricular activities and community involvement.
"With all of those elements, we have a good feel for which students will be most successful at Notre Dame," Scheidler said.
Like Notre Dame, Saint Mary's officials use the SAT as a determinant for admission but not as the most important criterion.
"The SAT does give a general comparison of students across the nation, but the admission decision is not solely made on test scores,"Nolan said. "We firmly believe that the best indicator of performance at Saint Mary's is high school courses taken and the difficulty of those courses.
Critics of the SAT contend that it favors wealthier students.
"With the end of affirmative action in California and several other states," said John Katzman, founder and CEO of the Princeton Review, "these [disadvantaged] students have been at the wrong end of an arms race, competing with wealthier students who spend hundreds of dollars to take SAT courses like our own [or thousands to get private tutoring]."
Ironically, Katzman's test-prep company makes money helping students prepare for the SAT.
Erik Sorensen, assistant director of the Princeton Review Midwest Branch, would like to see college admission offices place more emphasis on the SAT II tests, which, according to Sorensen, are more
representative of what students are learning in the classroom. He thinks that Atkinson's proposal will start a chain reaction.
"The University of California school system is the largest in the country," Atkinson said. "They have always been trendsetters. Other schools will now start to reconsider."
Seppy Basili, the vice president of another test-prep company, Kaplan Inc., disagrees.
"I think that Atkinson's proposal will go through. Until someone makes a better test, though, there will be no ripple effect. The combination of the SAT and a high school transcript is still the best predictor of college grades."
The California Board of Regents must first approve Atkinson's proposal before it takes effect. The earliest the change would be implemented is the fall of 2003.
All News Stories for Tuesday, March 20, 2001
