RIP Score Choice
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Jan 23, 2009 Posted by Ned Johnson
It was fun while it lasted. Score choice, it appears, is dead. No official proclamation. No unity, clarity or certainty. Of course - that would be too easy. But, score choice is not going to stick, at least not in the way originally designed. This week's "Chronicle of Higher Education" reports, "Yale University announced Thursday that it will require applicants to report all SAT scores, as the College Board has required in recent years, not just selected scores, as the College Board is now allowing students to do." So, Yale has joined Amherst, Princeton and enough other elite colleges denying their applicants score choice to pretty much explode the option for kids looking at top-tier colleges.
What does this mean for students and their families? Certainly, as colleges can and will likely change their policies at the drop of a hat, prudent students will err on the side of caution: don't trust score choice to hold. High school students are back to treating standardized tests as students did in years before. Don’t take the SAT (or the ACT for that matter - the baby looks to be thrown out with the bath water) “just to see how it goes” or to get a “baseline score.” Be prepared. Have an idea of where your scores will come out before taking the test for real. Take the PSAT sophomore and junior year to get practice and familiarity with the test and a prediction of future SAT scores. If you don’t do your best the first time out, it is not a crisis. Prep a bit more and take the test again. But, don’t blithely take a test, assuming you can hide a score. Those days, it appears, were few and fleeting.