Admissions Impossible - California without the SAT

National Review, March 19, 2001 by Abigail Thernstrom, Stephan Thernstrom

The president of the University of California, Richard C. Atkinson, has endorsed a bad idea: abandon the SAT, and thereby increase the racial and ethnic "diversity" of UC's many campuses. The SAT is the basic test of verbal and quantitative reasoning that virtually all applicants to competitive colleges have long had to take. A few small colleges have recently eliminated the exam as an admissions requirement, but the large research universities and most prestigious colleges find it indispensable. If America's most distinguished public higher-education system-the University of California-junks the SAT and redefines academic merit, it could send ripples of deeply troubling change across the nation.

President Atkinson asks UC's academic senate to consider two changes in admissions policy. First, he recommends that the university "require only standardized tests that assess mastery of specific subject areas rather than undefined notions of 'aptitude' or 'intelligence.'" He would not eliminate (for now) the SAT IIs, which are achievement tests in English, math, physics, French, and other subjects. But gone would be the SAT I, the main exam that has traditionally identified diamonds in the rough-students who come from lousy schools and haven't learned much, but who are nevertheless extremely promising academically.

Atkinson also recommends that "all campuses move away from admission processes that use narrowly defined quantitative formulas and instead adopt procedures that look at applicants in a comprehensive, holistic way." So, the SAT IIs stay, but should be weighed lightly. Atkinson hopes to "ensure that standardized tests [in general] do not have an undue influence" on admissions decisions. They should "illuminate the student's total record."

What counts as part of a "total record"? Part of the answer, at least, is perfectly clear: the disadvantage under which all black and Hispanic students presumably labor. UC, says Atkinson, must "be mindful that it serves the most racially and ethnically diverse college-going population in the nation. The University must be careful to make sure that its standards do not unfairly discriminate against any students." Atkinson knows full well that the admissions process does not "unfairly discriminate" against Asian students. And he certainly doesn't believe whites get a raw deal. Clearly, he is referring to non-Asian minority students under a system that relies on SAT I scores.

Is there any truth to his charge of discrimination? Without question, the UC student body is not a microcosm of the state. Today, a remarkable 45 percent of the undergraduates at Berkeley are Asian Americans, and the percentage at UCLA is 41. As Asian Americans make up 12 percent of California's population, they have more than triple their "share" of places on the two top campuses of this mighty system. In that system as a whole, they constitute 39 percent of the undergraduate student body.

Given the huge Asian presence at these schools, all other elements of the population are inevitably "underrepresented," especially at Berkeley and UCLA. As most people know, the proportion of black and Hispanic students at those two campuses has declined sharply since the abolition of racial double standards in admissions a few years ago. What is less well known is that non-Hispanic whites are also substantially "underrepresented" on both campuses. They account for half the population of the state, but are only a third of the Berkeley student body, and just a shade above that (36 percent) at UCLA. Here is striking evidence that the American Dream is alive and well-that meritocracy works and is not a mere mask for "white privilege." A population group made up largely of people whose roots in the country are only a generation old has quickly climbed to the top of the educational ladder in vastly disproportionate numbers.

Great news, one would think. But the president of the University of California disagrees. The meritocratic admissions policies that have produced the current UC student body, Richard Atkinson believes, are inconsistent with "American ideals of fairness and egalitarianism."

Why in the name of fairness and egalitarianism should we prefer the SAT subject tests to those that assess verbal and quantitative reasoning? Atkinson frets about teachers "under pressure to teach to the test" and affluent parents (white, he presumes) who enroll their children in SAT prep courses. But his real concern is the reputation of the main SAT and its impact on blacks and Hispanics. "Leaders of minority communities perceive the SAT to be unfair," he states, and those perceptions "cannot be so easily dismissed." "Most troubling of all, SAT scores can have a profound effect on how students regard themselves." Those who do badly come to doubt "their basic worth."

One might think that the SAT IIs, assessing subject-matter knowledge, are open to the same criticisms as the SAT I: that teachers teach to the test, etc. The difference between the exams, as Atkinson perceives it, is not spelled out in the major speech he gave on February 18. But his point seems evident between the lines. The basic SAT is viewed, he says, as "akin to an IQ test-a measure of innate intelligence" (although the College Board makes no such claim); but a low score on a world-history exam can be readily understood as indicative of nothing more than an absence of opportunity (that is, lousy teaching). This is a distinction, however, that most foes of the SATs would not accept. They read the scores on both forms of the SAT as a reflection of race and social class.