Nearly two million students took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in 2023. The SAT is administered by the CollegeBoard, which also administers various other nationwide college-preparatory exams. With college admissions getting ever-more competitive in recent generations, CollegeBoard claims that the SAT gives colleges and universities a set of standardized, quantitative tools to evaluate applicants, as opposed to subjective or variable statistics such as grade point average (GPA), extracurricular achievements and essays.
However, test results between different demographics of students are far from standardized. According to BestColleges, white and Asian students are far more likely to take the SAT (or its equivalent, the ACT) than Hispanic or African-American students. Additionally, the average score of an Asian SAT taker is 1219, compared to the average African-American student’s SAT score of 908. Such criticisms bring the legitimacy of the SAT as a college admissions tool into question, and seemingly implicate it in enforcing systemic inequalities in college admissions.
Men also score an average of 20 points higher compared to women taking the same test, due to being more likely to randomly guess answers. Differences in thought processes by gender alone are estimated to be the reason behind almost fifty percent of differences in SAT scores.
Like most factors relating to college admissions, SAT scores also correlate directly with wealth and privilege. Those who can afford expensive preparation programs, tutors and books score consistently higher on the SAT. The average SAT score for a student whose parents are in the bottom twenty percent of United States earners is almost 260 points below that of a student whose parents are in the top twenty percent of earners.
Findings like these raise genuine questions and concerns about the SAT’s role in college admissions. Is the SAT biased towards specific demographics of test takers? Or are critics of the SAT attempting to accuse the test of being racist, sexist and classist?
With new research about the implications of standardized tests being published every day, many universities are split between test-optional and test-required policies. Due to many students being unable to take the test during the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of universities across the country waived SAT scores when considering applications. However, testing requirements have recently been popping back up nationwide as the country recovers from the pandemic.
To evaluate whether colleges should or should not consider the SAT as a valid factor in admissions, it’s necessary to take a deep dive into not only the test’s past, but also the scientific evidence reviewing its efficacy as a tool for predicting college success, as well as the social circumstances that surround the test at large.
The SAT was created in 1926, when Princeton University psychologist and professor Carl Brigham expanded upon the US Army’s IQ test (known as the Army Alpha Test) previously developed by Robert Yerkes. Both Brigham and Yerkes were outspoken eugenicists, and Brigham’s revision of Yerkes’ work was explicitly designed to “weed out only the most qualified applicants among college students.”
However, Brigham’s idea of a “qualified applicant” was not necessarily an equitable one. In his book “A Study of Human Intelligence,” Brigham “warned” that the decline of American education would “proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial mixture becomes more and more extensive,” and that African-Americans in particular were unfit to go to college at all.
By 1933, Harvard University began requiring an SAT score to acquire scholarships, before transitioning to mandating an SAT score submission for admission by 1934. A few years later, the SAT had caught on like wildfire across the country, with many colleges considering SAT scores in their admissions.
Early supporters of the SAT argued that it made the college admissions progress more meritocratic, and gave a more equitable chance to public school students not hailing from traditionally private Ivy League feeder schools. Admissions officers at colleges like Harvard believed that the test would identify talented students at public high schools and accelerate their journeys into higher education.
“When these tests were originally developed, people really believed that if they did the job right they would be able to measure this sort of underlying, biological potential,” Christopher Jencks, a social science professor at Harvard, explained in an 1999 interview with PBS. “And they often called it aptitude, sometimes they called it genes, sometimes intelligence.”
The SAT’s original intent to measure innate intelligence – and by extension, supposed racial differences in intellectual superiority – originated from its birthplace in IQ testing, which has its own racist and discriminatory history. For many at the time (Brigham included), the SAT was a way to “prove” the intellectual superiority of white, wealthy students, enforce discrimination and justify institutional racism and classism. The underlying “biological potential” that Jencks mentioned was simply a less blunt method of saying “white and rich.”
With rapid gains in the field of IQ testing and the civil rights movements of the 20th century catching on, the original racist design principles underlying the SAT were slowly brought to light and criticized. Even Brigham, the creator of the SAT, later reversed his claims about innate intelligence and declared that the SAT tested “a composite including schooling, family background, familiarity with English and everything else, relevant and irrelevant.”
The SAT never tested innate intelligence. By studying for the test, students could raise their scores considerably. Thus, as the SAT grew in popularity nationwide, privileged students enrolled in prep courses to raise their SAT scores, further widening the score gap.
From the beginning, the SAT claimed to be a meritocratic assessment. Similarly, from the beginning, historically-oppressed racial minorities, low-income students, women and immigrants scored far lower on the test.
Brigham and other eugenicists took these differences and used them as evidence to justify their ideas that such groups of people were intellectually inferior. But the reality is that the SAT was designed so that rich, white students would score higher.
For years, the SAT included an analogy question in the English section that asked students to identify “oarsman: regatta” as the correct answer to the connection of “runner: marathon.” White students correctly answered the question far more often than students belonging to minority groups, not because of innate intelligence, but because they were more likely to know the word “regatta.” Similarly, rowing is an activity that is correlated with higher socioeconomic status, and this question therefore benefited high-income test takers over lower-income test takers.
In 1998, the SAT analyzed two questions and found one question was answered correctly by more white students, and the other, by African-American students. The SAT later discarded the question on which African-American test-takers outscored white test-takers, but kept the question on which white students scored higher.
“We still think there’s something wrong with the kids rather than recognizing there’s something wrong with the tests,” racial historian and civil rights activist Ibram X. Kendi said to the National Education Association in a 2021 speech. “Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to degrade Black and brown minds, and legally exclude them from prestigious schools.”
Even so, claims of the SAT being biased would have little weight if the SAT was not truly a useful tool for college admissions officers. So, if the SAT doesn’t measure innate intelligence, does it actually measure skills that are useful for predicting college success?
Research conducted by CollegeBoard as well as research conducted by Ivy League admissions officers indicates that SAT scores, in tandem with GPA, are much better predictors of future college success (when judged by college GPA, graduation rates and relative student happiness) than either metric alone. CollegeBoard also claims that due to rising grade inflation, a standardized metric for student aptitude is necessary.
Indeed, some research does point to the fact that the SAT is useful for predicting future college success and that students with higher SAT scores do better in college than students with lower SAT scores and similar credentials. But, this legitimacy remains clouded by criticisms of bias towards privileged test takers.
Despite extensive reforms to combat bias within the test’s format, student and parent opinions of the SAT as a method of assessing student quality remain low. Given the SAT’s history, as well as current disparities that exist between test scores, the future of the SAT as a college admissions tool remains hazy. Additionally, colleges are beginning to implement more holistic review processes in order to compensate for socioeconomic status, race, privilege, etc. as a method of increasing equity in college admissions.
Such measures could see the SAT become less and less useful as college admissions change, especially if the SAT is unable to overcome current criticisms of significant bias. Current test-taking trends indicate that fewer students are taking the SAT each year post-pandemic due to test-optional requirements being less stressful. But, trends in admissions appear to indicate that the SAT may soon be again required for admission to many highly competitive schools.
Will mandatory SAT submissions be welcomed? Or will skepticism of the test overcome them?
Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: in order for students to understand the SAT and for colleges to use it, it is important to know the history of the test, as well as current issues both for and against its use in admissions. The first step to establishing an equitable society is to decide what factors are making it inequitable in the first place.
