Friday, November 22College Admissions News

The problem with America's college entrance exam

The problem with America's college entrance exam

In the U.S., your SAT score is hugely important. But what does it *really* measure?

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The SAT college extrance exam is a gatekeeper of opportunity. But this wasn’t always the case.

Here are some sources I found useful when reporting out this piece:

* The Big Test is a well known book written by Nicholas Lemann, but a few years before he published this in 1999, he wrote this piece for The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/09/the-great-sorting/376451/

* Here’s the story behind the SAT overhaul: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/magazine/the-story-behind-the-sat-overhaul.html?_r=0

* This research paper, from Raj Chetty and colleagues, looks at the role of colleges in intergenerational mobility: https://www.nber.org/papers/w23618

* The SAT helps predict first-year GPA to an extent — but not for all students. We didn’t include this in our video, but this piece covers the research that shows the SAT isn’t predictive for a huge portion of students: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/26/new-research-suggests-sat-under-or-overpredicts-first-year-grades-hundreds-thousands

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