Is the SAT Making a Comeback?

Two weeks ago, The New York Times’ David Leonhardt dropped a bomb.  It’s something that an SAT tutor like me has known for a while now. “Without test scores,” Leonhardt reports, “admissions officers sometimes struggle to distinguish between applicants who are likely to thrive at selective colleges and those likely to struggle. Why? Because high school grades do not always provide enough information, especially because of grade inflation in recent years.”

Grade inflation.  It’s why parents of a student earning 90s in trigonometry are shocked when their child scores less than 500 (below the 50th percentile) on the Math section of the SAT.  As an SAT tutor, it’s devastating to break the news to these parents that their son struggles with sixth-grade arithmetic.

Image by @Greg_Rosenke on Unsplash

BUT it’s also the reason that SAT tutoring (or ACT tutoring) can be so important.  The right SAT tutor can pinpoint a student’s deficiencies quickly and begin to fill in the gaps. Since COVID, these gaps are more numerous and deeper than ever, according to researchers at Harvard and Stanford.

If Leonhardt is right, more and more colleges may follow the lead of MIT and begin to require test scores once again.  (As I’ve written before, most American colleges are “test-optional,” meaning the student can choose whether to send their scores.)

But even if they don’t, don’t we want our kids to understand decimals and percents?  (In my 30 years’ experience as an SAT tutor, I’ve found that students scoring less than 500 on the Math section rarely do.)  Don’t we want them to develop the logical thinking that comes from being able to do algebra?  Despite what their report cards say, more and more American students are struggling with high school math.  Do we want to send them to college without it?

Image by @belart84 on Unsplash. Discounts on clothing are just one way I’ve illustrated the use of percents in everyday life with students.