Juniors and the S.A.T

If your child is a junior in high school and wants to go to college, he should be preparing for the SAT - this very moment.

But what is the SAT - and why does anyone care?

Unfortunately, you should care because colleges care.

The SAT is quite simply, the biggest obstacle between your child and the college of her dreams. It is a national standardized test that measures only three subjects - math, reading, and writing. It hardly recognizes the breadth of a student’s knowledge, and certainly doesn’t care how hard he works. But because it is a standardized test – one that almost every college-bound student in the entire country will take – it has become an easy way for universities to weed out applicants.

A disclaimer here: There is also a national test called the ACT. It is used mainly in the West and Midwest. I won’t argue the merits of either. I talk about the SAT instead of the ACT because the SAT is used nation-wide, and is used by nearly every college in the South and the East. Suffice it to say - unless your child wants to go to North Dakota State, he is going to have to take the SAT.

Premier schools like UGA or Georgia Tech receive around 15,000 applicants a year. But both of these institutions accept only than a third of these applicants! It’s impossible to choose students from such vastly different backgrounds and different talents, so when admissions officers juggle numbers around, the SAT has become a uniform yardstick from which to make a decision.
Of course, the SAT is not the only thing colleges look at. Admissions counselors evaluate students by weighing a number of different criteria - such as GPA, difficulty of classes taken, sports, extracurricular activities and leadership skills. But there is no denying that the SAT weighs heavily on college-bound futures.
Every now and then you hear a college announce that it is placing less importance on the SAT. But quietly, over the last 15 years, more and more colleges have emphasized standardized tests. Even worse, prominent surveys, like US News, make SAT scores a huge category in the ranking of universities. Incoming high school GPA’s are not even included in this survey! This puts even greater pressure on universities to accept students with the best SAT scores, which means that students with high GPAs often lose in the admissions game.
I’m not saying this is a good thing. It’s just a hard reality.

Even athletic recruiters are using the SAT more than ever. NCAA requirements compel coaches to leave promising recruits off their lists if they do not have strong scores. Kids who think they can get a scholarship on athletics alone are finding it more and more difficult to overcome a bad SAT score.
And of course, almost all academic scholarships are driven by the SAT. Prior to 1990, scholarship money was mostly awarded to athletic recruits and to students with high financial need. Today, almost every competitive academic scholarship is heavily influenced by the SAT.
So why does Georgia rank only 46th in the SAT?

There are many reasons. The biggest is that so many Georgians take the test. Remember those kids in North Dakota? They don’t take the SAT unless they expect to go to some fancy school back East - so only the very smartest kids take the test.

Compare that to Georgia, where nearly 70 percent of seniors took the SAT - the 13th highest rate in the nation! Additionally, Georgia should be proud that more than 26 percent of our test-takers were African-American, the highest participation of any state. In fact, more than 10% of all African-American SAT test takers in the nation were from a single state - Georgia.

But what is the Morgan County school system doing to ensure your child scores high on the SAT?

First of all, let me say it is not the high school’s responsibility to teach the SAT. Morgan County schools are committed to graduating teenagers with high school diplomas, not SAT scores.

And it’s not like we’re not doing a good job. Last year more MCHS graduates went to college or military service than ever before.

Still, I believe that it is vitally important that we – as a school system – raise our SAT scores. Not because we want to look good in newspapers, or so real-estate agents can brag about our schools. They already brag about our schools - and rightfully so.

I want our seniors to go to the college of their choice - not the school they had to settle on.
So what are we doing to ensure your teen gets a good SAT score?
I have called for, and the Chairman of the Board has requested, that the superintendent commission an SAT study committee. Teachers and administrators - from the middle and high schools - have met several times with professors from UGA to work on a strategy. Their report is due in December, and I hope we will implement many of their ideas.
In the mean time, I’m pleased to report the high school has already been proactive. Because MCHS administered the PSAT to our sophomores – in a program in concert with the rest of the nation – they will soon receive valuable information about where our students are lacking. This is a first-time event and a very forward-looking step by MCHS.
In addition, over the last few years the high school has achieved the monumental accomplishment of enrolling one third of its students in college-level courses. The AP and IB programs MCHS offers are simply unrivaled by any other AA school in Georgia. Taking harder level courses is a great way to improve your scores because these courses make you think creatively – just like the SAT.
Standardized tests have a lot of flaws. They do not reflect the true talents of your child. But in my opinion, juniors who really want to go to a premier college should make the SAT a priority for the next 2-3 months. Once a high SAT score is attained, your precious cherub can sit back and watch the colleges come to her – and enjoy her senior year with far fewer worries.

Dave Belton