By Juliette Bellinson
Special to Campus News
On March 4th, 2023, Columbia University announced that it would permanently drop the SAT and ACT as a requirement for admission. The University announced this decision after recent studies revealed that the SAT is heavily biased against low-income students of color.
Other elite colleges and universities should follow suit to achieve more equitable opportunities in higher education.
The day after Columbia announced its decision to drop the testing requirement, the University put out a statement reading, “Our review is purposeful and nuanced – respecting varied backgrounds, voices, and experiences – in order to best determine an applicant’s suitability for admission and ability to thrive in our community.”
In other words, Columbia finds that the biases built into these tests render them incapable of measuring students’ true capabilities. Columbia president Lee Bollinger has admitted that low-income black and brown students who underperform on the SAT have been subjected to centuries of “invidious discrimination” through a lack of educational and financial resources “that has not been undone.”
Bollinger and others are beginning to recognize that admissions have been rigged against students from disadvantaged backgrounds from the get-go. By removing this testing requirement, Columbia took a major step towards eliminating barriers that prevent students from underprivileged backgrounds from accessing elite universities.
By admitting that the SAT is rigged against low-income and minority students, Columbia has finally come to terms with an unfortunate reality about the test. For over a century, universities have upheld the mistaken notion that the SAT is a truly standardized, unbiased assessment of a student’s academic potential. However, in actuality, the SAT has only served to reinforce the power of the privileged at the expense of talented, disadvantaged students. To understand how and why that is, we must turn to the history of the test.
The SAT was, ironically, invented as a means to make admissions more equitable for low-income students. It was first proposed in June 1904 by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot who was fed up with how “the stupid sons of the rich” dominated his school. He hoped the testing would objectively measure students’ talents and facilitate entry to Harvard based on merit rather than birthright.
Eliot, along with other administrators at elite colleges, turned to psychologist Dr. Carl Brigham to design the SAT. Brigham was a staunch believer in the “science” of eugenics. He believed that traits such as intelligence are innate, regardless of one’s circumstances. With this in mind, he advocated for the SAT to be designed as an IQ test, which would allow colleges to admit students with the greatest “natural capacity” for academic success. As he did more research into the test, Brigham would soon realize that natural intelligence was a farce and that the scores represented a “composite including schooling, family background, and familiarity with English.” In other words, the “merit” that the SAT sought to measure, was a reflection of privilege. However, the damage of Brigham’s admissions test had already been done.
In 1960, almost sixty years since Eliot first denounced the “stupid sons of the rich,” Harvard’s student body consisted of only 9 black students. Several exceptional black applicants, the majority of whom came from impoverished backgrounds, were rejected on account of low SAT scores. Meanwhile, the students at Harvard remained overwhelmingly white and wealthy. In its attempt to level the playing field, the SAT reinforced the stratifications it was designed to topple.
Ultimately, the history of the SAT shows how discrimination towards disadvantaged students has been baked into the supposedly “meritocratic” college admissions process from the very beginning. By admitting that the SAT hasn’t leveled the playing field, Columbia is finally addressing its mistakes and embarking on a journey to open doors for lower-income and minority students.
Critics of Columbia’s decision posit that, while the SAT is imperfect, the holistic factors which will be replacing it suffer from the same bias. Indeed, it is true that wealthy white students are more likely to experience grade inflation and dot their resumes with fancy internships and extracurriculars. However, this does not discount the irreparable damage that the SAT has done to disadvantaged students’ opportunities for social mobility. The work towards equitable admissions certainly does not end with the SAT. But by removing the test as a requirement for admission, Columbia has certainly made a good start.
Columbia University has made a laudable decision to forgo the SAT as a requirement for admission. Other universities should learn from their example and take the same path. While removing the SAT only constitutes the first step in a long journey of reconciliation and redressal, it is a vital one that every university should take.
Juliette Bellinson is a student at Columbia University studying history.
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