College Board miscalculates 4,000 SAT scores

The College Board announced last Wednesday that it had miscalculated the SAT scores of 4,000 students, which is less than 1 percent of the students who took the newly formatted October SAT.

The miscalculation affected 94 Hopkins applicants, whose scores have been altered by an average of 30 points, including one student's score that reflected a discrepancy of 240 points.

Also, the College Board admitted that an additional 1,600 tests had been overlooked for errors.

According to the College Board's Executive Director of SAT Information Services Brian O'Reilly, 83 percent of the affected students nationwide saw an increase of less than 40 points on the 2,400-point scale.

Another 12 percent of student scores increased by from 50 to 90 points, and five percent of the remaining 4,000 students had scores that increased by 100 points or more.

In most cases these discrepencies where detrimental to the students scores rather than benefical, because marks that were made too lightly were not registered by the scanton grader.

Even though the scoring error affected only a small percentage of the half million students who took the test, 16 students had their scores misreported by 200 points or more.

Colleges were notified of the error by overnight mail, receiving a list of students whose scores were improved by the recalculations. Therefore, the issue should have little affect on student's scores or applications as a whole.

O'Reilly said, "We encouraged, or urged, those colleges to review the files of the students that were affected by this error."

The 94 Hopkins applicants with affected scores had improvements from 10 points to 240 points.

Director of Undergraduate Admissions John Latting said that he feels that the recalculations will not have a significant impact on admissions decisions.

"We'll certainly change decisions, if necessary. I'll be surprised if we do," Latting said.

"For the most part, I think we'll find that we're comfortable with what we already had, even though we're happy to make changes if we need to," he added.

When reviewing applications, the SAT score is only one of many factors colleges evaluate along with high school transcripts, extracurricar activities and personal statements.

Dean of Enrollment and Academic Services William Conley explained, "Although SAT scores are important, we look at so much other information that I'm pretty confident that we will treat those students fairly."

He added that there are numerous ways in which the SAT scores are evaluated and all of the discrepancies have been taken into account.

"We are also looking at subscores. The 240 points -- that was 60 points on the critical reading section, 120 points on math and 60 points on writing," Conley said.

As a policy, the College Board does not report score miscalculations that resulted in lower scores to colleges. Since it is now too late for a senior to retake the test, it would also be unfair to the student to report a lower score.

O'Reilly said, "If we'd taken away their highest score, this would be penalizing students for something that was not their fault."

The miscalculations are attributed to a technical error in the process of scanning the answer sheets and therefore was easily caught and corrected.

The error was twofold; the answer sheet had a high moisture content and the bubbles had been filled in too lightly or otherwise incompletely.

Both defects had to have happened for an answer sheet to be scored incorrectly, suggesting why less than one percent of students' answer sheets were affected.

O'Reilly explained, "Some of the answer sheets that went through the scanner had excessive moisture that made the paper in the scanner expand ever so slightly and moved one bubble ever so slightly."

The actual significance of the increase in scores is very small and may not affect admissions decisions despite how students may feel. "Students are under a great deal of pressure in the college admissions process," O'Reilly pointed out.

"They're still probably upset that they didn't get that extra 20 points."On the other hand, he said "There's not enough precision in a SAT score to say that a 580 is better than a 560 and colleges know that."

Conley explained that Hopkins admissions decisions are based on a range of factors, including non-cognitive factors that include the interest and motivation of the student to learn.

"Those are things that come through when you read an application," Conley said. "The more vibrant student life is here, the more successful I feel we are on the admissions front."

O'Reilly concluded that there is always the possibility of an error: "There is no such thing as a 100 percent perfect system. There is always a slight risk that such errors can occur."

"Will there never be a mistake on the SAT again? I don't think anybody can promise that."

Although such discrepancies in the SAT have prompted some colleges to weigh the test less heavily in comparison to other factors, the SAT is still an important component for most schools, including Hopkins.

Conley said, "At this point, there is no formal discussion of changing the SAT requirement at Hopkins. We continue to find it a useful dimension in our selection process."

Conley continued, "There is no reason for discounting the value of the SAT because of this incident. We will account for those impacted."