Posted on Mar 13, 2006

Scanning errors on 4,000 SAT exams have put college admissions officials to the test.
   Schools received word of the miscalculation last week. The brief letter sent by the College Board informed colleges of the number of erroneous scores they received, leaving schools to determine if the misreportings changed the outcome for affected applicants. Unfortunately in those cases,
   Most of the mistakes on the the burden falls on the applicants 2,400-point college entrance test to contact the school directly if were between 10 and 40 points, they feel the incorrect scores and only 16 changed by 200 points jeopardized their chances of gainor more, the College Board said. ing acceptance, he said.
   The scoring changes appear to “There will be ‘X' amount, and have made little or no difference we have no way of knowing who in an applicant's acceptance or re- those students are,” Andrea said. jection status in Capital Region colleges, with many institutions just weeks shy of making final decisions.
   “In looking at the early signs, it doesn't look as though [the scores] affect admissions or scholarships,” said Robert Andrea, director of undergraduate admissions at University at Albany. The school received 18,000 applications for the upcoming semester, he said.
   About 150 scores from the October SAT exam were sent to the
   Siena College received 48 wrong scores and The College of Saint Rose received three. Skidmore College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were not notified of any scoring changes, spokeswomen for both colleges said.
   Of Union College's 4,400 total applicants, only 40 received scores requiring adjustment, school officials said. None of the adjusted scores changed the applicant's original status.
   “We pulled every file, and in no case did the difference make a difference,” said Dan Lundquist, the college's dean of admissions and financial aid.
   Union places less emphasis on SAT scores than it does on overall high school performance, said Lundquist, who cited the recent scoring snafu as one pitfall of the tests.
   “Very clearly, the lesson here is that if you're going to place a lot of reliance on technology that is not 100 percent, then you have to place less emphasis on the results,” he said.
   Most of the errors involved tests taken in New York, New Jersey and California. Pearson Educational Management, the Austinbased company that scanned the tests, said the 4,000 exams may have been damaged when wet weather caused the paper to grow, forcing the oval answer indicators to move out of registration for the scanning head, according to Associated Press reports.
   College Board officials said the 4,000 tests translate to eighttenths of 1 percent of the 495,000 students who took the exam in October.
   The SAT is a three-section test with a maximum score of 2,400.