The importance of SAT scores

Ok, this is a newspaper article, but, the information is very important!

SAT: UNFAIR? ELITIST? OVERRATED? ALL OF THE ABOVE
Hartford Courant -- May 29, 2009
Rick Green Column

New research suggests that colleges pay even more attention to the dreaded SAT than we thought.

But the provocative new study by University of Colorado researcher Derek Briggs also concludes that if I'm willing to pony up for one of those pricey SAT prep programs, I could get a leg up — not only in getting my kid into a top school, but in capturing more financial aid.

Now that's kind of interesting, because as a middle-class, college-educated white male, some might say I already have a few advantages.

Cough up a little more and maybe a few more doors open up. What a country!

All this got me thinking because like a lot of you, I'm beginning to sweat about how to pay for college for my children. I've got a daughter who did pretty well on the PSAT this year and the SAT is now on the horizon.

When I called Kaplan Test Prep and explained my situation and my daughter's test scores, "Jeffrey" told that me my daughter "would probably need one-on-one tutoring. She needs something more." Boy, don't they always!

At-home tutoring packages start at $3,299 for 20 hours, he told me.

"We guarantee a score increase," he added.

Because it's widely known that test scores often go up from the PSAT to the SAT, I wasn't so sure that $3,299 — or even that budget course the town offers for a few hundred dollars — would have much impact.

And although Briggs' study discounts a huge effect from test prep, he has a paradoxical conclusion.

For a student who already scores pretty high, a 20- or 30-point increase might make a big difference, said Briggs, author of "Preparation for College Admission Exams," which he wrote for the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Indeed, small gains for students with already high scores can make the difference at elite colleges, because some of these schools have rigid cutoffs for scores.

I asked him whether this merely accentuates an already unequal system.

"If you are from a wealthy family and you want to get into the Ivy League, you might increase your odds," Briggs said. "The people who are getting the advantage of coaching and test prep are people who already have an advantage."

Or, as Briggs concluded in his report, "If money and time are no object, commercial coaching or private tutoring may well be worth the cost."

College, it seems, might not be the great equalizer some of us think it is.

Peter Schmidt, author of "Color and Money," a book that takes a critical look at college admissions, told me that "people out to get an unfair edge" are part of a distorted admission process at top schools that puts too much emphasis on the SAT.

In a recent online essay for Alternet, a website, Schmidt went even further, arguing that "most elite higher-education institutions systematically favor people from privileged backgrounds who display selfish, cutthroat behavior."

Whoa. My ears pricked up a few minutes later when I reached Robert Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, who told me that better scores often mean more financial aid.

"We know already that test scores go up with family income. Kids who already have the advantage, their parents are able to buy them another leg up and then get paid for that," he said. "It's a classic example of the rich getting richer."

All of this, Schaeffer said, "shows that the fear students and parents have about how some colleges use SAT scores are not over-exaggerated."

Fearful is right, but I do admit to a cutthroat motive behind why I want my children to get the best SAT scores they can — college without bankruptcy.

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-sat-college-panic-0529may29-column,0,3646129.column