STUDENTS’ scores on the SAT in the United States closely reflect their family’s wealth rather than any innate ability, according to the head of an American university.
Don Randel, President of the University of Chicago, said that the test did not provide an objective measure of ability. Students from wealthier backgrounds could improve their results through coaching.
“In the US, we have had SATs for a very long time. Many people are quite disenchanted with them and would like to do away with them,” Mr Randel told The Times during a visit to London to open Chicago’s new business school.
“Performance on SAT is perfectly correlated with family income and that is not the basis on which we would like to choose students. With well-to-do families, they go to good schools, hire private tutors, and have test-taking classes.
“There are certainly poor kids who do very well on those tests and this gets them into institutions where they might not otherwise have thought to go. But people are quite disturbed about the general correlation with income.”
Mr Randel said that the SAT “tests better than anything the ability to take that test”.
Chicago, which charges tuition fees of around £16,500 a year, is also sceptical about the recent addition of a short essay question in tests. “We require our own essay topics. We have a set of idiosyncratic topics that we ask people to choose among and write about in an attempt to identify someone with an original quality of thought,” Mr Randel said.
