Dartblog

Baylor University is attempting to rise in the college rankings by paying students to retake SAT tests. The university’s logic here is that these higher scores will factor in to average SAT numbers for the school, a key factor in rankings like U.S. News. Students who retake the test are being rewarded with $300 bookstore credit and those who raise their score 50 points or more get $1000 in financial scholarship.

Professor’s at the school don’t seem to like it and something doesn’t quite seem Kosher.

On the one hand, students and schools ‘game’ every component of the admissions process, no matter what it is. Perhaps the SAT, because it is so visible and quantifiable, just magnifies this phenomenon. Baylor may just be getting the short end of the publicity stick; the numbers they are fudging make front page news whereas other ranking variables can be dealt with under the table.

Still, if Baylor gets away with this ploy you can bet that many more schools are going to jump on SAT-retest bandwagon. Rankings are too powerful a motivator. Schools would have virtually nothing to loose with an incentive-based system that rewarded students proportionately for their improvement, obviously students wouldn’t either. It seems to me that the or at least an important thing is to have all schools judged at the same point in time. Obviously if college juniors take the SAT they school do better than high school juniors, but many schools already admit sizable numbers of students who take time off before applying or take the test multiple times and this seems fair. Would a rule that said students could take the test only one time be more fair?

Another thing to note, a couple weeks ago when I took the LSAT I remember having to write out a lengthy paragraph which said, among other things, that my taking this test was only for the purposes of admission to law school, is there no such certification (for whatever it may be worth) for the SAT?