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| |    College Entrance Examinations: Putting Tests into Perspective by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. Our competitive culture puts a tremendous value on high test scores and admission to a prestigious college. It's no wonder, then, that college entrance examinations--the SATs, ACTs, and others--so often cause intense anxiety in teens. Many parents pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars for private coaching in hopes that their child will bring home higher scores. But some people may wonder, Are test scores really that important, and is test preparation truly worth the time and money? Alphabet soup The different names of the tests can be confusing. You might remember that SAT used to stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test; it was later changed to Scholastic Assessment Test. ACT originally stood for American College Testing. But recently, the nonprofit companies that produce the tests decided that the tests' official names would be simply SAT and ACT, not standing for anything! To further confuse the issue, there is now the SAT I and the SAT II. The SAT I and ACT are aptitude tests. The SAT II is an achievement test. (In fact, before the name was changed, the test was called the Achievement Test.) Aptitude vs. achievement Aptitude tests are intended to measure a student's ability to reason verbally and mathematically, independent of any specific facts. For example, aptitude tests typically require students to understand a relationship between two words (say, between "amusement" and "laughter") and then pick out a pair of words that are related to each other in the same way (such as "sorrow" and "tears"). Achievement tests measure a student's knowledge in a particular subject--say, math or Spanish. For example, does the student know the central ideas put forth in the Gettysburg Address? Advanced Placement (AP) tests, which are increasingly popular among students and admissions offices, are also achievement tests. Are standardized tests crucial? Even as "test prep" companies have multiplied, the tests themselves have come under fire. Many experts argue that both the SAT and the ACT discriminate against women and minorities. For example, women as a whole score lower than men on the SAT, but earn higher grades their freshman year. Most admissions officers put more weight on high school grades than on the standardized test scores and take into account the difficulty of a student's high school courses, the application essay (sometimes called a personal statement), and recommendations from teachers, coaches, and the like. When admissions officers take all of that information into account, it's debatable how much the standardized tests actually add to the decision-making process. Arguing along these lines, the president of the University of California recently proposed that the entire state system stop using standardize admissions tests altogether. In all, more than 400 colleges no longer require SAT or ACT test scores. (For a listing, see FairTest.org.) Instead, students have the option of submitting a report or an essay that they wrote for a high school course, which allows the admissions office to see both the quality of the student's work and the toughness of the school's grading. Nonetheless, the majority of colleges still rely on standardized tests, so your child may have to take them even if you're philosophically opposed to such tests. To find out which tests are required at which schools, look in college catalogs, printed college guidebooks, or online. Does coaching help, and if so, how much? The College Board (which produces the SAT I, the SAT II, and AP tests) maintains that coaching doesn't raise SAT I scores very much--only 25 to 40 points, on average. However, critics of the SAT argue that students who can afford extensive coaching, which can involve 40 hours or more of effort, do raise their scores significantly, giving an unfair edge to more well-to-do students. Both sides agree that taking the test more than once also raises scores considerably. (The test fees are in the range of $25, making it affordable for many students to take them twice.) For motivated students, there are many free and low-cost options for learning test-taking skills and practicing. For the SAT I and ACT tests, which claim to measure aptitude or potential, it is not clear that expensive test-prep courses actually raise scores enough to justify the expense. However, for the SAT II and AP tests, which attempt to measure a student's accumulated knowledge, there is no question that studying and tutoring can help. What can parents do?
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