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We are committed to providing you with the most up-to-date resources and announcements from the college admissions testing landscape. Here are some of the top headlines from this past month:
SAT Tests Canceled in China, Macau Over Cheating Concerns
By Joe Mandak, ABC News
Summary: The College Board revealed test cancellations in China and Macau for the January 23 SAT exam due to suspicion that some students may have already seen copies of the test. Up to 45 testing centers were affected. How students got a hold of the test is still a mystery. This incident follows an occurrence last year when “federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh charged 15 Chinese citizens in a conspiracy to have imposters take the SAT and other college entrance tests in western Pennsylvania since 2011.”
What this means: Test cancellations can be a huge hassle, and especially for something like cheating, the College Board takes it very seriously. This incident will most likely result in the College Board increasing security measures and may even cancel future test dates. Students in China and Macau should be sure to continually check for updates on the makeup exam date, and stay on top of any further news on the topic.
What Your Child Needs to Know Before Taking the SAT and ACT
By Rachel Stickland and Leonie Haimson, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy (featured in Washington Post)
Summary: As if the prospect of taking a high-stakes test like the SAT or ACT, in addition to scrambling last minute to take the old SAT before it changes in March, isn’t stressful enough, students are often tricked into providing personal information in the optional pre-test question section. Practice tests and classes rarely cover this part of the exam, so students feel obligated to fill out their information most likely because they believe it’s a mandatory while they are under pressure. This, however, is not the case. What students do not realize, according to this article, is that information may be used to help colleges decide who not to recruit or admit.
What this means: Whether or not all of this is legitimate, remember that you do not have to fill out any of the information in the pre-test questions. Save yourself some time and energy for the part of the exam that actually matters!
More Evidence of Bias in How Colleges Use SAT Scores
By George Vlahakis-Indiana, Futurity
Summary: A recent paper, soon to be published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, found that college students across the U.S. may have a skewed view of their academic success based on how they perform on standardized tests. Their main findings were that “tests do not work in the same way across colleges and universities,” and “hundreds of thousands of people’s predicted GPA based on SAT scores were under- or overestimated.”
What this means: According to the authors of the study, “If the prediction is not the same, that means that you can benefit or suffer based only on your ethnicity or gender, because your performance is expected to be higher or lower than it will be, which means you’re more or less likely to be offered a scholarship or you’re more or less likely to be offered admission.” Essentially, it’s questionable whether or not standardized tests such as the SAT can be used as a predictor of student success due to extreme variance among colleges and universities. Their conclusion is that, without understanding if the test predicts performance to the same extent across all groups, the admissions process “may be unfair for members of certain groups, and the implications are critical for people’s future.”
Watch this Video on the PSAT Score Report from the College Board
For even more information on your PSAT score report, view ArborBridge's video here.
Scores for New PSAT are Finally Out. What to Know About Them (and What They Mean for Redesigned SAT)
By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post
Summary: While this article focuses on the delay in releasing score reports to students, it also covers some important information about the implications of the scores on the new PSAT, even though the scoring charts are still preliminary (and are likely to remain so until May when both the March and May SATs have been administered).
What this means: Read through this article as thoroughly as you can to get a better sense of what your score means. If you’re still curious about redesigned PSAT percentiles and how they were affected, check out our post here.
Problems with PSAT Score Delivery Sparks Anger at College Board
By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post
Summary: Counselors, students, and parents were not happy with the College Board after a pretty significant delay in releasing PSAT score reports in January. The College Board announced that this delay was due to the new online system which was created to accommodate scoring reports for the redesigned SAT in March. According to the article, there were still errors and bugs on the new online system by mid- to late January.
What this means: The College Board is facing a tremendous amount of pressure and backlash in the months leading up to the redesigned SAT. This incident was just one of several. Our recommendation, yet again, is to switch to the ACT. Let the College Board smooth out the kinks of the new exam and stick with a test that is reliable.
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