Yale Daily News

This is a good decision by Yale. Score Choice is bad for everyone (except the College Board, who makes big money if everyone takes the test six times instead of once or twice...)

The only thing I worry about is, this does create yet another opportunity for unscrupulous, nervous 18-year-olds to decide to lie on their college applications. But there are already lots of opportunities of that kind anyway.

Yale's decision is contrary to their present policy of superscoring SAT scores which encourages multiple test takings.

This is a minor fallacy, but the SAT I costs $25 and the ACT w/ writing is $63 (WITHOUT writing it's $46). I would know...I just registered :)

But it doesn't really affect the integrity of the article.

I do, however, feel this is a bad choice on Yale's part.

Bob, this is not completely contrary to the current policy. I don't believe that Yale has a real problem with multiple test takings; they are almost certainly perfectly happy admitting a student who has taken the test two or three times and willing to look at the "best" in each section over these tests. However, Yale is probably less willing to accept a student who has taken the test six times to raise his/her score from 2120 to 2220 and might wonder whether such a student is too obsessed. The new SAT policy only further encourages students to take the test again and again, but doesn't allow Yale to make any distinctions between the hyperobsessed and the normal -- and hence only further encourages kids to become focused on taking and retaking the SAT.

I agree with Julia; this is another bad choice by the admissions office. The cost of taking the SAT is minimal; if one can take the SAT five times for $125, there really is nothing that prevents even the very poor applicants from taking the SAT multiple times.

Of course getting SAT tutoring for thousands of dollars is not an option for all applicants, but that is a separate issue that has little to do with Score Choice. Moreover, SAT tutoring adds little value to simply buying a few books for less than $100 and taking practice tests by yourself (which is what I did when I went through the process years ago, since I also didn't way to pay thousands of dollars for a class). Any serious Yale candidate should be disciplined enough to do this (unless they are so incredibly smart as not to require to practice.)

"Recent Alum" - are you serious? You really think that if taking the SAT five times costs $125, "very poor" applicants will be just as likely as rich ones to fork over $125 and take it five times? That's supposed to be a serious claim?

Anyway, this was a good decision by Yale not only because of the obvious and large social justice ramifications (since in fact, wealthy, suburban kids are WAY more likely to take the SAT five times than are any other kids), but because it will help everyone by reducing the pressure on high school students to push on obsessively with re-test after re-test, devoting tons of their time and energy in high school to this pursuit with dubious educational value.

Hopefully, a lot of kids who have already tried the SAT a couple of times, and perhaps improved their score a little, will be more likely to just leave it alone, and say at some point, "you know, my score was okay, and I don't want to look like a score-grubbing psycho, so I'm just going to stop worrying about it at this point, and get on with the rest of my high school extracurricular and academic activities."

If Yale's decision prompts some kids to do that, it'll be a real service to the applicants and their high schools.

This Score Choice thing is a scary plot by the College Board to earn more revenue by cynically turning high school into even more of an unending standardized test nightmare than it already is. It's great that Yale is resisting.

Requiring students to submit all scores GOING FORWARD is Yale's choice, of course, but surely it cannot in good faith do so retroactively. Many students have no doubt taken the SAT or ACT on a lark, just to see how they'd do, acting in reliance on the stated policy of score choice. For Yale to change the rules midstream would unfairly penalize these students. A fair compromise would be to say, henceforth, any and all test scores must be submitted. By the way, an unintended consequence of this policy will be to encourage test preparation, since taking any given test will now be a riskier proposition.