It’s not often that I feel sympathy for the College Board, the owner of the SAT. But here’s a case where the organization created an essay to respond to the demands of college admissions officers and tried to improve the essay to make it more like a college writing assignment. However, the additional 50 minutes was never popular with students, who had yet another college-prep item on their to do lists. Last week, amid a rising tide of colleges announcing that applicants no longer have to take the SAT, the College Board killed the essay entirely, along with its 20 subject tests.  

In light of the news, I wanted to point out that the College Board’s own 2019 research found that the optional essay was particularly useful for students of color and students who don’t speak English as their primary language.

• For some groups of students  -- those whose best language was not English alone and those who identified as Black, Latino, Asian or mutliracial -- the essay score improved the ability to predict how well the applicant would do in college English and writing classes by more than 30 percent above knowing only the student’s high school grades and verbal SAT score (currently called Evidence-based Reading and Writing or ERW).  

• There’s a long-running research debate over whether standardized exams, such as the SAT, provide useful information about a college applicant. A consistent body of research has found that high school grades are more predictive of how a student will do in college. But adding tests to the mix can make the predictions more accurate.

1. Jessica P. Marini, Paul A. Westrick, Linda Young, Doron Shmueli, Emily J. Shaw, And Helen Ng (October 2019) Validity of SAT® Essay Scores for Predicting First-Year Grades. College Board.  https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED599389.pdf 
2. Allensworth EM, Clark K. High School GPAs and ACT Scores as Predictors of College Completion: Examining Assumptions About Consistency Across High Schools. Educational Researcher. 2020;49(3):198-211. doi:10.3102/0013189X20902110 
3. Bowen, W. G., Chingos, M. M., McPherson, M. S. (2009). Crossing the finish line: Completing college at America’s public universities. Princeton University Press. 
4. Geiser, S., Santelices, M.V. (2007). Validity of high-school grades in predicting student success beyond the freshman year: High-school record vs. standardized tests as indicators of four-year college outcomes. Center for Studies in Higher Education.