New College Board Policy Revamps SAT Score Reporting

The College Board has implemented a new SAT policy this year called Score Choice. Score Choice gives students the opportunity to choose which scores (by test date) they send to colleges in accordance with each educational institution’s test score practices. A student can choose scores from one, several, or all SAT test dates. Essentially, the new policy allows students to choose the scores they want to send and bury the lower ones.

According to the College Board this new reporting method was instated because:

We know that many of you may feel anxious about taking tests. So we’ve tried to make the SAT experience a little less stressful by giving you what you’ve asked for—a new way to report your scores to colleges and scholarship programs.

Yet, according to the Hartford Courant, not all students like the policy change, feeling that it is causing confusion since The College Board did not work make a direct agreement with college and universities across the country.

Kathleen Megan of the Hartford Courant reports:

Many schools want to see all test scores, while promising to consider only the applicants’ highest scores. Among these are Yale University, which requires that all scores be sent and the University of Connecticut, Wesleyan and Trinity, which strongly encourage students to submit all scores.

Other schools like Wake Forest University have adopted a test-optional policy, typically a trademark of smaller liberal arts colleges – and the SAT debate rages on.

[via Hartford Courant]