<p>I think sjmom nailed it. Coming from my small parochial school in podunk Iowa which doesn’t even offer any AP’s, the SAT provided some measure of something (ability? potential? savvy for taking a lame test? who cares…) that I had no other way of demonstrating.</p>
<p>I agree too with nedad’s point about the scores being a range. The SAT is a blunt measuring instrument, not a C-T scan of your brain. I like to think that most colleges feel this way too and therefore use the scores responsibly. But it is not hard to understand why students often doubt this is the case, when, for example, you see the National Merit Scholarship Program using the PSAT score as a hard cutoff.</p>
<p>I am bringing up my quote from this thread because now college admission decisions are in. I have been accepted by Colgate, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Hamilton, Harvard, and Princeton. While I don’t think that my high standardized tests scores secured my acceptances, I do stand by my original prediction that they would earn my application a serious look by the admissions committees. My school has absolutely no track record with the most selective colleges and has a very low average sat score combined with a low percentage of students going on to four year colleges. My sat, sat II’s, and two AP scores probably said a lot more to these colleges about my being prepared for college than the easy A’s I earned at my academically weak high school.</p>
<p>Congratulations, Coldcomfort. My S had a similar experience two years ago, coming from a similar type school. I love hearing about kids from the “other kind of high school” getting into great colleges! Renews my faith in the process.</p>
<p>Congratulations and well done, coldcomfort! I agree with your argument that the SAT’s can potentially be a great equalizer for students, especially ones coming from a school without a strong rep, high average test scores, or inside connection to college adcoms. My biggest issue with the SAT’s are, however, that we are now in age where a fair percentage of students, particularly those in metro areas and suburbs, avail themselves of pricey tutoring for these tests…and i am talking about $300 per class and upwards. While it is clearly possible to study independently, achieve strong scores, and benefit even more from a bout of self-teaching, the playing field here indeed becomes a slippery slope…not for those who do well without tutoring, but for those who do. Perhaps that partly accounts for the plethora of phenomonal stats we see here on CC…without redonculously priced tutors, would we have the same abundance of 700+ scores? And given two students of average motivation, is it equitable that one who has sufficient financial resources is given a gateway to stellar scores while another is not? This is a quandary that perhaps cannot be resolved… and perhaps when thinking about the admissions process, “fair” is a term that is no longer cogent…if it ever was.</p>