Now and for the next few weeks, college admissions deans are ?in committee? ? sequestered, huddled and locked in their ivory tower offices. There they pore over the grades, essays, letters and what some may see as the magic make-or-break SAT and ACT scores of more than 1 million future college freshmen…</p>
<p>?The SAT, for better or worse, has been held out as the Holy Grail of acceptance. It?s not,? said Dennis Trotter, dean of admissions at Pennsylvania?s Franklin & Marshall College.</p>
<p>Today almost 25 percent of U.S. News & World Report?s top 100 colleges have begun to de-emphasize standardized tests, a trend that began with Maine?s Bowdoin College in 1969.</p>
<p>The National Center for Fair & Open Testing?s Web site, fairtest.org, lists more than 730 four-year public and private colleges out of about 2,400 that have made the college boards less important or optional. The list includes Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Middlebury and Bennington colleges in Vermont, Mount Holyoke and Holy Cross colleges in Massachusetts, and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>?Grinnell College is a place that does require them, and they are important,? said William Sumner, dean of admission and financial aid at Grinnell in Iowa, one of the country?s leading liberal arts colleges. ?But they are precisely half as important as what?s most important, which is the school record.</p>
<p>?People typically think two things get them in or keep them out of a college,? Sumner continued. ?Ninety-five percent of what gets them in or keeps them out is their school record.?..</p>
<p>Caren Scoropanos, spokesperson for the College Board in New York, which administers the SAT, is just as emphatic. ?It is not an intelligence test,? she said.</p>
<p>College admission officers are aware that the SAT and ACT are reasoning and assessment tests. They show only to what degree a student has mastered a certain limited body of material offered in high school. It doesn?t measure creative thinking, complex ideas, leadership or drive or other qualities that make fine applicants. They also are aware that opportunity, education and race can affect SAT or ACT scores…</p>
<p>Showing off good scores can only help, even at schools that do not treat them with the weight or importance they once had. Maine?s Bowdoin College has been SAT-optional for nearly 40 years, but its admission office still looks at scores, said William Shain, Bowdoin?s dean of admissions.</p>
<p>?If you ask me to choose between a kid with terrific grades and fairly good scores and a kid with terrific scores and fairly good grades, the first kid has a better chance always.?</p>
<p>But if both kids are equally great?</p>
<p>?The kid with the lower testing doesn?t have the advantage.?