Don't Ask and They Don't Have To Tell

“Scored For Life- Why SAT Scores and GPA’s Should NOT be Used Beyond the College Admissions Process”

By Kate Balingit and Dr. Jon Reider, former Senior Associate Director of Admission for Stanford University, and curriculum developer for www.iAdmissions.com, a unique network of former admissions officers providing affordable, one-on-one college counseling.

Asking a potential IRS Employee to disclose his Tax Returns for the past 3 years seems logical, and in many ways imperative, but we should not extend this analogy of relevant disclosure to the realm of standardized test scores or GPA from one’s high school career.

Students get grades and test scores when they are teenagers and young adults. In other words, they get them during one of the most volatile periods of self-transformation. It strikes me as pretty far-fetched to ask an adult in a public position about something that happened 10, 20, or even 30 years ago.
For one thing, grades are hard to interpret; there are dozens of different ways of calculating a GPA, and even those calculations don’t reflect progress over time or the quality of the high school or the quality of the courses the student took. A GPA by itself is essentially meaningless, it simply cannot be understood without a substantial amount of very specific contextual circumstances.

Secondly, standardized test scores are absolutely subject to factors such as family income, level access to education, and quality of high school- all things that we as Americans love to pretend are equal but in reality never are. The score looks like a “real number” but it is really an approximation with respect to a very specific skill set. And no one, including every test-maker, thinks that test scores predict anything more than freshman year grades in college. The “predictive validity coefficient” of the SAT is intended solely for college admissions, so to extend it to something as expansive and diverse as “public service success” would be both foolish and impossible.

Finally, in regards to even using a college GPA as a service benchmark, we must honestly acknowledge that college grading patterns are also very inflated these days, so most college GPAs will appear high when not taken in context.
Frankly, I don’t care what Obama’s grades and test scores were; I care about what kind of job he is doing now. Let’s stay focused and not grasp at illusions masquerading as facts.

For tip-sheets and pod-casts about College Admissions by Dr. Reider and Ivy League Admissions Officers visit www.iadmissions.com.

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