Hundreds of applications to Capital Region colleges were reevaluated because of SAT grading problems, but admissions officials said their original decisions have stood in all cases so far.
The College Board said the faulty scanning of answer sheets to SATs taken on Oct. 5, 2005, resulted in 4,411 students nationally getting lower grades than they should have earned. The average under-grade was 100 points on the 2,400-point examination.
Dan Lundquist, director of admissions at Union College in Schenectady, said he was concerned that although the numbers of Union applicants with incorrect scores was low, it could still be a life-changing situation for some of those students. Forty out of about 4,400 Union applicants had their SATs mis-scored, the College Board informed Union.
In March, the College Board gave colleges the names of students whose scores were wrong and their correct grades.
“In the heat of the moment, before we really knew what was happening, the concern for us was not so much it was a small percentage of our applicant pool,” Lundquist said. “If you flip it around, it was 100 percent of each of those 40 kids' applications. … In the end, it didn't make any difference.”
SAT scores adjusted upward did not affect students that Union had already accepted, Lundquist said. Nor did lower scores change the status of students who had been denied acceptance, Lundquist said. In those cases, other factors-such as students doing poorly on demanding high school courses-still warranted denial of admission, he said.
“In no case did we find any of the swings, plus or minus, were enough to become an individual factor” to change initial admissions determinations, Lundquist said.
Siena College in Loudonville also reevaluated about 40 applications because of the scoring problem and, like Union, changed no admissions determinations, Siena spokeswoman Janet Gianopoulos said. No admissions decisions were changed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, either, spokeswoman Theresa Bourgeois said.
As many as 200 University at Albany applicants were among the students with mis-scored SATs, President Kermit Hall said.
UAlbany was still working with the College Board this week to find out more about the scoring problems and understand more about what they entailed, Hall said.
However, “we don't think we will change anything based on what we know,” Hall said.
Decisions, decisions
All the Capital Region college officials said SAT scores are a factor, but not the major one, in deciding which students they admit. A student's high school record, especially in difficult courses, extracurricular activities and other factors are also given major weight in the decision, officials said.
Lundquist said that about 30 years ago, Union became one of the first colleges to de-emphasize SAT scores in favor of giving greater weight to other factors in evaluating students for admission worthiness.
“We think the most important indicator [of college success] is a high school track record of good grades on tough courses,” he said.
In an appearance this week before the state Senate's higher education committee in Albany, College Board President Gaston Caperton said the scoring irregularities did not have a “major impact” on students or the college admissions process for fall 2006.
He said that scores were under-reported by 40 points or less in more than 80 percent of the instances where students earned more points than was reported by the College Board.
The College Board urged colleges to reevaluate admissions decisions for all students involved with scoring irregularities, Caperton said.
“We believe they did so,” he said.
Score sheets will be double-scanned by the grading contractor to the College Board, Pearson Educational Measurement of Iowa City, Iowa, to minimize the chances of future problems, Caperton said.
In just over 600 instances nationwide, Caperton said students were credited with higher scores than they should have gotten because of the scoring irregularities.
Just under 500,000 students took the SATs last Oct. 5.