Should SATs Matter?

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By the 1970s, when the inevitable backlash began, two arguments emerged. The one that drew more media attention charged that the test was inherently biased against blacks and Latinos, who to this day score worse on average than whites. The other was that SAT scores measure only the ability to take the SAT--a skill that, depending on your ability to pay, you could pick up in a coaching class (a growth industry that in 1999 alone raked in $400 million). Aside from that class inequality, the test's failure to measure anything meaningful also meant that kids were spending a lot of time fretting over pedagogical phantoms at the expense of real learning.

The College Board says the average SAT taker spends only 11 hours preparing--and that coaching on average adds fewer than 40 points to a score. But test prep has become a big part of teen culture in most suburbs. Even the College Board sells its own test-prep material. The Princeton Review's $799-to-$899 SAT classes typically meet weekly for six weeks, and students are expected to practice analogies and memorize vocabulary at home. "There has been a kind of testing mania that's hit us at all levels," says Sylvia Manning, a chancellor of the University of Illinois. It begins as early as middle school, when kids prepare for the Preliminary SAT, whose results are used by some colleges to identify potential matriculants when they are only in 10th grade. By senior year, "kids live and die by what they score on that three-hour test," says Ray Brown, dean of admissions at Texas Christian University. "Or at least they think so."

In fact, most admissions officers--both at elite colleges and giant state schools--say they work hard not to put too much emphasis on SATs. They know, says Florida State admissions chief John Barnhill, that "the SAT doesn't measure heart." Although his office generally rejects applicants who score below 900, he remembers a student who was admitted with a 720--but who had a 3.9 GAP. "We have space for students like that, provided they are in the special support program," he says. "I like the SAT, but I don't love it. I wish I could find something that was a more fair and accurate measure."

The racial gap in test scores is one of the most vexing problems in social science, in part because it opens the door to the whole creepy notion of eugenics. Eugenicists believe that the human species would advance more quickly if it discouraged reproduction among groups deemed unfit--say, those that score poorly on aptitude tests. It's worth noting that the SAT was designed by a psychology professor who became a leading member of the eugenics movement before denouncing it later in life.