The Misguided War on the SAT

[MWolf]

@bludbulldog

The SAT was originally a tool which Harvard, Yale etc used to get beyond the prep school old boys’ circle.

Not really, or, should I say, in an extremely limited manner. It was used to increase the number of wealthy White Protestants who were not attending one of the regular feeder schools for the Ivies. It was, however, also being added as another barrier to Jews and other minorities.

The SATs were based on the army IQ tests, which was also the test that was used on Immigrants to test “IQ” of people of different origin. We all know that Jewish immigrants did not perform well on those, nor did any of the “undesirables” that the Ivies were trying to keep out of their Hallowed Halls.

Of course, like today, the proponents of those old SATs were adamant that the SATs were Fair, Impartial, Objective, Accurate, and, most of all SCIENTIFIC. Any attempt at pointing out how biased they were was attacked as being “Anti-Science”. It’s not surprising, since, for the first time, racists, misogynists, and antisemites could claim that they had absolute, unambiguous, and scientific proof that they, the Wealthy, White Anglo-Saxon and Nordic men, were Superior To All Others.

So no, SAT tests were never added to make admissions more meritocratic, they were added to expand the pool of Wealthy White Protestants to replace the Jews and others whose numbers were now being slashed or eliminated entirely.

There is really no way that a test adopted by the same people who invented discriminatory admissions standards was supposed to be inclusive.

@bludbulldog

SAT is both part of the brand and a useful tool for assessing applicants. Contrary to many predictions that schools would stay TO after the affirmative action Supreme Court decision in order to obscure potential discrimination the elites are bringing back test required. SAT is here to stay

I agree, especially about “part of the brand”:

@MWolf

Call me cynical, but I believe that it’s all about branding. One of the ways that the magazines that are pandering the wealthy families who attend Harvard and other Ivies is to publish lists of “The Smartest Colleges”. They are all based on the average or median SAT scores of those colleges.

However, I think that the smaller “elite” LACs will likely stay TO, since they have always put less emphasis on SATs to begin with, and “We Have The Students With The Highest SAT Scores” has not been an important part of their branding.

Most publics, except for CA colleges, will also likely not be TO, since SATs are pretty convenient for colleges which don’t have the resources to look through every single application in detail. Using the SATs they can cheaply and quickly reject half of the applicants that they want to reject. Even with all its flaws, the SAT analysis about the graduation rates of applicants with SAT scores below the roughly 40th percentile are probably accurate enough to justify removing these from consideration. This is especially true for public universities that are performing a trade off between efficient use of public funding to support students on one hand, and not contributing to increased economic stratification, on the other.