Colleges Dropping the SAT – Or not

USA Today reports the much ballyhooed trend of colleges not requiring the SAT for admissions is already a movement in some doubt.

Although a few colleges have indeed made the test optional, the College Board, which creates and administers the SAT, says across the nation only 45 schools have truly adopted this policy.

In fact, the article cites one school, Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, which tried dropping SATs several years ago and found it didn’t work.

Among other things, the article points out that grading inflation in high schools makes it more important for colleges to require the SAT to better understand the true preparation and capability of applicants. Certainly, there have been similar concerns in Kentucky where the operation of our KEES college scholarship system has led to charges of grade inflation. To my knowledge, no major Kentucky college has signed on to the idea of dropping entrance testing, either

Whether the other schools that have dropped the SAT will be able to do better than Lafayette remains to be seen, and it is clear that the Associated Press reporter who actually wrote the USA Today article is still “from Missouri” on this one.