The SAT's

So people want to know, do the SAT scores count to get into college ? The answer is YES !! Are they more important than the gpa ? The answer is again, YES !!

Why ?

Well I am sure you have heard about grade inflation. It started in the 1970's and really did not go into effect into the 1980's when schools were worried about students self esteem. Now a days an A at one school does not mean the same as an A at another school, even in the same region of the country. And an A in the northeast does not mean the same an A in the South or West.

A recent survey of parents revealed that 80% of the parents THOUGHT their child was in the TOP 20% of their school, because they were straight A students.

In addition, schools now have 3 or 4 tracks for students to follow: there is the traditional track, the honors track, the accelerated track and the college prep track. Whatever all those tracks mean.

So you see colleges can not depend on a students gpa (grade point average) from high school. (interesting note: the gpa is still a better predictor on how a freshman will do in college than the SAT scores).

So how did the whole SAT thing get started. It was first introduced by the schools in the northeast to keep the immigrants that were coming from Europe in the early 1900's. Then it became more popular after WWII when the GI Bill was passed. Again the northeastern schools did not want farmers wondering their hallways. Research shows that these GI's actually succeeded as well or better than the normal high school kid because they took their studies seriously.

Final with grade inflation of the 1970's and 1980's and 50% of the population trying to go to college, the SAT became King.

Lets say you are big State College and your football team has just won a couple of national titles and everyone want to go to that school. Now there are 50,000 applicants but only 8,000 available spots. The easiest way to reduce that 50,000 is to punch the students SAT scores into a computer and sort. You can reject the 30,000 students who earned less than 1200 on the SAT's. They can apply at other States schools who have plenty of seats still available.

There is also the community college schools where SAT's are not even required for admissions. So every one in America gets a chance.