College Board

SAT and SAT Subject Tests

The SAT is a fee-based standardized test for college admissions in the United States first administered in 1926.^[9] Tests begin at $46 and go up to $60 for an additional essay. In addition, there are various fees that can accumulate. Registering later results in a $29 fee, registering by phone results in a $15 fee and changing a test date, center, or test type results in a $29 fee. The waitlist testing fee is $49 and every additional score report is $12. As a result, student testing fees can often run up to $200 or more for a single test.^[10] The SAT is administered by College Board in the United States and is developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The SAT covers writing, reading, and mathematics. SAT scores range from 400 to 1600, with each of the two sections worth up to 800 points. Most students take the test during their junior or senior year of high school. In the marketplace, the SAT competes with the ACT, another standardized college admissions test.

The SAT Subject Tests are intended to measure student performance in specific areas, such as mathematics, science, and history.

On March 5, 2014, College Board announced that a redesigned version of the SAT would be administered for the first time in 2016. The exam reverted to the 1600-point scale, the essay is now optional, and students have three hours to take the exam plus 50 additional minutes to complete the essay.^[11] In that same announcement, College Board also revealed that they would be partnering Khan Academy to make available, from spring 2015, free test preparation materials for the redesigned SAT. The preparation software will help students practice and help them identify their areas of improvement at a low cost. Hundreds of unreleased practice problems, with videos demonstrating their step-by-step solutions, will also be made available immediately. By doing so, the intention is to enable all students to succeed at the assessment.^[12]

On May 13, 2015, College Board announced the release of a new credential initiative to get students more interested in careers focused in STEM with a Project Lead the Way partnership.^[13]

PSAT/NMSQT

The PSAT/NMSQT is a fee-based standardized test that provides firsthand practice for the SAT for a cost of $16. It also functions as a qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarship Corporation's scholarship programs.

Advanced Placement Program

The College Board's Advanced Placement Program is an extensive program that offers high school students the chance to participate in what College Board describes as college-level classes for a fee, reportedly broadening students' intellectual horizons and preparing them for college work. It also plays a large part in the college admissions process, showing students' intellectual capacity and genuine interest in learning. The program allows many students to gain college credit for high performance on the AP exams, much in the same manner as the CLEP. Granting credit, however, is at the discretion of the college. There are 2,900 colleges that grant credit and/or advanced standing. Critics of the Advanced Placement Program charge that courses and exams emphasize breadth of content coverage instead of depth.

College Level Examination Program

The College Level Examination Program (CLEP) provides students of any age including high schoolers, college students, homeschooled students, adults, senior citizens, children, and exceptional toddlers with the opportunity to demonstrate college-level achievement through a program of exams in undergraduate college courses. There are 2,900 colleges that grant credit for passing CLEP exams.

Accuplacer

The College Board's Accuplacer test is a computer-based placement test that assesses reading, writing and math skills.^[14] The Accuplacer test includes reading comprehension, sentence skills, arithmetic, elementary algebra, college-level mathematics and the writing test, Writeplacer. The Accuplacer test is used primarily by more than 1,000 high schools and colleges^[15] to determine a student's needed placement. Often community colleges have specific guidelines for students requiring the Accuplacer test. The Accuplacer Companion paper-and-pencil tests allows for students with disabilities to take the test through its braille, large print and audio tests. The biggest benefit of the Accuplacer and Accuplacer Companion tests are their ability to be scored immediately through an online scoring system and taken in remote locations. While there are normally no fees for taking the test, some institutions may charge a fee to retake the test. Note that if a testing institution is not local, an examinee may be required to arrange a proctor for the test. If so, a local library may be willing to serve as proctor as there are not many other options for individuals in this case. Most schools will only test their own admissions candidates.

SpringBoard

SpringBoard is a pre-Advanced Placement program created by College Board to prepare students who intend to take AP courses or college-level courses in their scholastic career. Based on Wiggins and McTighe's "Understanding by Design" model, the SpringBoard program attempts to map knowledge into scholastic skill sets in preparation for Advanced Placement testing and college success. Units of instruction are titrated to students within and across all school grades, providing a vertically articulated curriculum framework that scaffolds learning skills and subject test knowledge. Implicit in the course curriculum, the program embeds pre-AP and AP teaching and learning strategies across grade school levels and classwork.

The curriculum is applicable to grades 6 through 12. Teachers are provided with formative assessments, professional training, and a variety of teaching tools to track student progress. The instructional framework is integrated in the curriculum content and subject materials. SpringBoard also provides other Web 2.0 resources aimed at making the program more community oriented.

Exam fees

The SAT Reasoning Test with essay costs $60^[20] ($89 if late) as of 2018, the AP exams cost US $94 as of 2018, and taking AP exams is often a requirement for students taking AP classes.^[21] The SAT Subject Tests cost a baseline of $26 with a $20 fee for each test.^[22] Furthermore, there are numerous other services that can be added to the basic costs, including late registration, score verification services, and various answering services that are available. SAT score reports cost $12 per college for 1–2-week electronic delivery, or 2–4-week paper or disk delivery, depending on what method the school requires ($31 extra for two-day processing). College Board allows high school administrators to authorize fee waivers for some services to students from low-income families, generally those meeting National School Lunch Act criteria.^[23] In addition, due to the competitive nature of the test, many students find it necessary to take preparatory courses or to have SAT tutoring, which can cost hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars.

Even College Board's College Scholarship Service Profile (CSS), a college financial aid application meant to help students pay for college, requires a fee. For the 2015–16 school year, the price is $25 for the first report sent and an additional $16 for each additional college to receive the information.

In 2006, College Board had $582.9 million of revenue but spent only $527.8 million, leaving a $55.1 million surplus.^[24] Budget surpluses persist despite market-leading compensation packages for College Board executives – in 2009 College Board paid out a $1.3 million/year package for CEO Caperton, more than the head of the American Red Cross or Harvard University. It paid nineteen executives more than $300,000 each per year.^[25]

MIT study

In 2005, MIT Writing Director Les Perelman plotted essay length versus essay score on the new SAT from released essays and found a high correlation between them. After studying 23 graded essays he found that the longer the essay was, the higher the score it was given. Perelman found that he could accurately determine the score of an essay without even reading the essay. In his study, he discovered that several of these essays were full of factual inaccuracies. The College Board does not claim to grade for factual accuracy.

Perelman, along with the National Council of Teachers of English also criticized the 25-minute writing section of the test for damaging standards of writing taught in the classroom. They say that writing teachers training their students for the SAT will not instill revision, depth and accuracy, but will instead guide them to produce long, formulaic, and wordy pieces.^[26] "You're getting teachers to train students to be bad writers", concluded Perelman.^[27]

Advanced Placement (AP) classes

Some teachers have criticized AP classes as restrictive in the nature of their curriculum and yet indispensable due to the importance of AP classes in the college admissions process. College Board is effectively able to control every aspect of AP classes directly or indirectly. The $94 fee,^[28] which is noted critically above, results only in a score report with the test name and grade. No details are given on how this scoring was reached nor are individuals given access to this information from College Board.^[29]

Reporting errors

In March 2006, it was discovered that College Board had mis-scored several thousand tests taken in October 2005. Although the Board was aware of the error as early as December, it waited months to respond, and in late March, schools still did not have correct details. Within days of the first announcement, the Board corrected upward the number of affected students.^[30]

Many colleges use the SAT score to decide acceptance and scholarships. The late reporting of errors upset many high-profile colleges. The dean of admissions at Pomona College commented, "Everybody appears to be telling half-truths, and that erodes confidence in College Board...It looks like they hired the people who used to do the books for Enron".^[30]

Sale of student data

As of 2017, College Board charged $0.43 per name for access to student information.^[31] Investigation by the New York Civil Liberties Union revealed that one of College Board's customers was JAMRS, a military recruitment program run by the United States Department of Defense.^[32] College Board and ACT have been sued over the use of this information.^[33] In addition, there is criticism that students are not sufficiently made aware that their data is being sold.

Recycling SAT exams

On August 25, 2018, the SAT test given in America was discovered to be a recycled October 2017 international SAT test given in China. The leaked PDF file was on the internet before the August 25, 2018 exam.^[34]