Colleges Review Admissions After SAT Errors
Incorrectly Graded Tests
Produced Lower Scores
For Some 4,000 Students
Colleges across the U.S. were reviewing admissions decisions after the College Board disclosed that 4,000 students who took the SAT last October had incorrectly received lower scores because of a computer glitch.
Universities and the College Board, the nonprofit association of colleges and high schools that oversees the SAT, said they expected few reversals of admissions decisions. Still, in 5% of the cases, scores were 100 points less than they should have been across the tests' three sections -- enough to damage an applicant's chances.
The error -- and the College Board's disclosure that it first had indications of a problem last December -- added concerns about accuracy and transparency to longstanding criticisms of the test, which have included accusations of cultural bias and failure to predict students' future success.
While test-takers have long challenged test makers on the answers to individual questions, the latest scoring snafu appears to be among the largest involving a nationwide test. In Minnesota, a scoring error led to 8,000 students being wrongly told that they had flunked a 2000 state math test. Last year, 4,000 students taking an SAT Chemistry subject test were given incorrect scores, though the discrepancies were smaller and caught long before admissions decisions.
Yesterday, representatives of two big test-preparation organizations, Kaplan Inc., a unit of Washington Post Co., and Princeton Review, attacked the College Board's decision to wait to tell affected students. The College Board said it started notifying students yesterday. The two companies urged affected students to write schools immediately to make sure their applications were reconsidered.
The College Board said the problem affected less than 1% of the 495,000 students who took the test in October. "I recognize there is an expectation of perfection or at least precision and accuracy associated with something like the SAT," said Brian O'Reilly, the College Board's executive director of SAT information. But, he added, "There is no such thing as a perfect system."
The College Board said 83% of the errors understated the students' scores by 10 to 40 points across the three sections of the SAT reasoning test: writing, critical reading and math, each of which is scored on a 200 to 800 point scale. Another 12% had scores 50 to 90 points lower than they should have been and 5% of the errors understated scores by 100 points or more. Mr. O'Reilly said small differences in scores -- up to 30 or 40 points -- aren't viewed as statistically significant and weren't likely to damage students' chances.
The problem comes at the height of the admissions season, with schools notifying applicants in April. Most admissions officials said it is still early enough in the admissions cycle to correct errors that might have affected admission or financial aid decisions. But students who applied to early-admission programs could have already been rejected or deferred for admission because of low scores -- and some may have narrowed their choice of schools based on artificially low scores.
Marilee Jones, dean of admission at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the errors affected 28 of the school's 11,400 applicants. MIT will review those cases today to see if it would have an impact on decisions. "Luckily, we received the information in the nick of time," she said, adding that the school mails decisions on March 17. Harvard said "perhaps four dozen" of its nearly 23,000 applicants had received incorrect SAT scores but that none would be disadvantaged in their admissions chances.
Bruce Walker, director of admissions at the University of Texas, Austin, said 31 students had incorrect SAT scores sent to the university, although only eight of them had subsequently applied for admission. Ohio State University received erroneous SAT scores of 27 students. Thirteen applied and eight had been admitted, said Mabel Freeman, assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions.
At the New York Institute of Technology, 50 of 2,000 applicants were given erroneous SAT scores. But while the school, with campuses in Manhattan and on Long Island, has found one or two students not admitted to specific programs because of their scores, it hasn't found any who were denied admission to the school, said Jacquelyn L. Nealon, dean of admissions and financial aid.
The College Board's Mr. O'Reilly said the first indication of a problem came in December when two students asked that their scores be recalculated by hand -- a request that about 1,000 students make yearly. Mr. O'Reilly said a "small number" of such requests result in score changes, often because of problems reading bubbles filled in with pencil, so the December complaints didn't "automatically send up a red flag."
By late January, the College Board had indications of a possible "systemic problem" but discovered its magnitude only "in the past couple of weeks," Mr. O'Reilly said. The College Board traced the error to computer scanners in Texas and said it had since been fixed and the group has added more human double-checking.
电脑出错打低分 高校重把入学关
全美各所高校正在重新审核入学申请，原因是此前美国大学理事会(College Board)宣布，电脑给去年10月4,000名参加美国大学入学考试──学术水平测试(Scholistic Aptitude Test)的学生打错了分数，造成他们的分数偏低。
各所高校和美国大学理事会认为，只会有为数不多的招生决定需要进行调整。不过，有5%的考生总分数比实际结果低100分，足以影响这些考生的入学申请。
长期以来，SAT已经引起了一些非议，例如，有人认为这一考试存在文化偏见，而且并不代表考得高分的学子未来就一定会成为高材生。此次电脑出错更是让人质疑SAT的准确性和透明度。去年12月，美国大学理事会宣布首次发现电脑给学生打分有误的迹象。
虽然考生针对个别问题的答案的准确性提出质疑已是屡见不鲜，但本次打分出错牵扯面之广恐怕在历史上也很少见。参加2000年明尼苏达州州数学考试的8,000名学生成绩出错。去年，4,000名参加SAT化学考试的学生拿到的也是错误的成绩，但那次错误偏差没有这次这么大，而且早在院校发出录取通知书之前就已纠正了错误。
周三，两大考试培训机构──Kaplan Inc和Princeton Review的代表对美国大学理事会未能及时通知受影响考生提出了批评。美国大学理事会称，它是周三才开始通知考生电脑打分有误的。这两家机构敦促受影响的考生立即与学校联系，以确保学校重新考虑他们的申请。
美国大学理事会称，在参加去年10月考试的495,000考生中，受到影响的考生不到1%。美国大学理事会负责SAT信息的执行董事奥雷利(Brian O'Reilly)表示，“我知道人们对SAT寄予厚望，至少希望它要保证准确性。但是，要知道没有任何系统是尽善尽美的。”
美国大学理事会称，83%的错误导致考生SAT推理测试（含写作、评论性阅读、数学三个部分）的成绩被低报了10-40分。12%的错误导致考生成绩被低报了50-90分，剩余5%的错误导致考生成绩被低报了100分甚至更多。奥雷利表示，从统计角度来讲，30分或40分的出入不会产生重大影响，也不大可能影响到考生的入学申请。
此次问题的出现正好赶上招生的高峰期，因为高校将在4月份发放录取通知书。大多数负责招生的主管表示，招生工作刚刚展开，有充裕的时间去改正那些可能对入学或奖学金产生影响的错误。但那些申请了提前入学院校的考生可能因为分数不够的缘故已经被拒绝或被推迟入学，而另外一些学生可能因为分数不高而限制了他们报考学校的范围。
麻省理工学院(MIT)招生办主任琼斯(Marilee Jones)表示，在申请该校的11,400位考生中，有28位学生的分数被弄错了。该校近期将重新审核这些学生的申请，以察看他们是否会受到影响。琼斯说，幸运的是我们及时收到了这一信息。她补充说，麻省理工学院将于3月17日发出录取通知书。哈佛大学表示，在23,000名申请者中，有48名考生的SAT成绩被低报了，但没有一人的入学申请因此受到影响。
德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校(University of Texas-Austin)招生办主任沃克(Bruce Walker)称，在报考该校的考生中，有31人的SAT成绩有误，但随后在这31人中只有8人提出入学申请。俄亥俄州立大学(Ohio State University)负责大学招生的助理副主任弗里曼(Mabel Freeman)表示，有27位申请报考该校的学生成绩被低报，后来有13人又申请了该校，其中有8人得到了录取通知书。
纽约理工学院(New York Institute of Technology)负责招生和奖学金的主管尼伦(Jacquelyn L. Nealon)称，在报考该校的2,000名考生中，有50人的成绩被低报了。虽然有一、两位学生因为分数的缘故没有被某些系录取，但这50名学生都被该校录取了。
美国大学理事会的奥雷利称，他们去年12月第一次发现电脑可能出错的迹象，当时有两名学生要求人工打分、重新统计他们的分数。每年都会有1,000名左右的学生提出这样的要求。奥雷利称，只有一小部分这样的请求最终导致分数发生了变化，而且往往是因为机器在扫描答案时出错了，因此12月份学生提出质疑并未引起足够的警觉。奥雷利称，到1月下旬时，美国大学理事会才意识到电脑系统可能真的出问题了，不过受影响的考生仅仅局限于之前几周参加考试的学生。奥雷利称，美国大学理事会发现得克萨斯州的电脑扫描仪出现了错误，并称这个故障现在已经排除，美国大学理事会已经增加了人工查验的工作量。
