Colleges should move away from SAT and ACT

A group formed at the request of the National Association for College Admission Counseling is ssuing a report recommending that colleges rely less on the SAT and ACT.  The leader of the report is William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions and financial aid.  In a quote for the New York Times, Mr. Fitzsimmons said,

“It would be much better for the country,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said in an interview, “to have students focusing on high school courses that, based on evidence, will prepare them well for college and also prepare them well for the real world beyond college, instead of their spending enormous amounts of time trying to game the SAT.”

Standardized tests have been coming under increased scrutiny in the past few years with more and more selective colleges eliminating their use.  This new study adds to the questions that colleges need to ask themselves when using standardized tests in the admissions process.

UPDATE: NACAC has now posted a link to the report “Report of the Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission”.