New SAT Policy

Earlier this year, the College Board (the administrators of my favorite standardized exam, the SAT) decided to give students the choice of which scores to send to schools.  In the past, if students took the exam more than twice, all of their scores were sent to schools.  However, the class of students applying next year will be the first who are allowed to choose which scores are sent and which are "hidden" from universities.

Unfortunately, this new system assumes the overall composite score is more important than the individual subscores, which is not the case for Notre Dame.  In fact, a student may hurt his or her chances of admission by not sending us some scores.  As you know, we "mix-and-match" scores and consider the highest Critical Reading and highest Math score received by a student, even if those two scores come on different testing dates.  By "hiding" scores, students may mistakenly prevent us from giving them the full credit they deserve.

This Newsweek article summarizes the new policy quite well.