More and more colleges are making standardized tests optional or ignoring scores altogether. At the same time, admissions departments have become increasingly focused on students’ resumes of extracurriculars. This change of focus makes some people happy: They hate the SAT or ACT, mostly basing their judgments of the exams on subjective experience of the exam being stressful and humbling. Now, these standardized tests are by no means perfect. They perpetuate language prescriptivism, don’t account for unique abilities or creativity, and have all sorts of other faults. But I want people (mostly the well-off who call for the demise of the SAT) to consider this: Which is more resource-intense--academic excellence or extracurricular experience? Extracurriculars require social connections, disposable income, and the ability to travel. Academic success does require motivation and inspiration, which are hard to come by. Yet access to educational resources is much less dependent upon socioeconomic status (SES) than National Geographic student expeditions or trips to South Africa.
Stanford education professor Sean Reardon has noted in an opinion piece for The New York Times that academic gaps between the rich and poor have increased over the past 30 years in the U.S. But, he notes, “rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well.” The rich are putting more effort than ever into enhancing their children’s success in school, and they’re not doing it solely by supporting their children’s academic development.
People often claim that the SAT is a rich child’s game. A University of Minnesota study, though funded by the College Board, found that the correlation between SAT score and SES is only 0.25. What would be the correlation between SES and the stunning extracurriculars and leadership experiences that no one complains about?
It might not be ideal, but as it is, being able to write an essay, recognize when sentences are not written in Standard American English, and do some basic math are essential skills in college. Instead of a wealth test, two writers report for Slate, the SAT is a reasonably unbiased test of preparedness and a decent predictor of first-year GPA; ignoring its results could set students up for failure.
There’s also concern that colleges are becoming test-optional simply in order to inflate average SAT scores as well as selectivity, given that more students apply when SATs are not required.
Lest you bring up the common objection that the rich can afford crash courses and therefore the SAT is completely useless: The cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has data showing that test prep (crash courses, for instance, often affordable only by the well-off) doesn’t work.
Pinker estimates that 10% of Harvard admissions is based on academic merit and the rest “on participation in athletics, the arts, charity, activism, travel” and one’s family’s connections. The universities of many other countries use standardized tests to select the best, not necessarily richest, students. He doesn’t see how putting more emphasis on the tests would be worse than the current system of oligarchy and nepotism; rather, it could help make the system a little bit more of a meritocracy. Pinker speculates that an Ohio State graduate might be a better hire for a company than an Ivy League graduate, but employers don’t recognize this. Thus, the offer of free education, opportunities, and prestige is still desirable for lower-SES students, and it would be nice if admissions to the Ivy League were a meritocracy. Of course, these universities need wealthy alumni, so they have little incentive to change.
Still, here’s one proposed part of the solution: Jonathan Cole, a professor at Columbia, has suggested in The Atlantic that faculty, instead of just “young admissions officers,” need to become involved in the admissions process. He hopefully suggests that this would be tried out first at Ivy League schools, which have the luxury to try it. Perhaps faculty would realize that academic talent is sometimes more relevant than a student’s parents’ ability to start a charity for their child to run or to afford vacations disguised as leadership experiences.
It’s hard to say whether they’re implementing real change, but a Harvard School of Education project called “Making Caring Common,” a collaboration with the deans of admissions of many highly-ranked private universities, recommends that only the few extracurriculars that are very important to a student should be considered. It warns admissions committees to be suspicious of service extracurriculars that appear just to be done to pad students’ resumes. They urge committees to consider family obligations as extracurriculars for lower or middle class students, and to consider whether students did not have access to extracurriculars.
At the very least, I want people to spend some of the time they spend on complaining about the SAT in considering the possibility that an over-emphasis on extracurriculars, as conventionally construed, could make the system even more unfair to lower-SES students. Library cards are free; trips to France are not.