College Board Eliminates Score Choice on SAT II Tests

As early as next academic year, students applying to Harvard will be unable to review their SAT II scores before deciding whether to send them to Byerly Hall.

The change is part of a nation-wide change made by the College Board—which manages the SAT program—to eliminate their Score Choice option.

Currently under the College Board’s Score Choice option, students are allowed to receive their SAT II before they are placed on official testing reports sent to college admissions offices.

Executive Director of the SAT Program at the College Board Brian O’Reilly said the change would benefit students.

“More students were being hurt than were being helped” under the old policy of score choice option, O’Reilly said.

According to O’Reilly, many students missed admissions deadlines as a result of unintentionally not releasing their SAT II scores for official report to colleges.

Vanna Cairns, dean of juniors and seniors at Harvard-Westlake School in North Hollywood, Calif., agreed that the change was for the better.

“[Score Choice] created so much confusion and gamesmanship,” Cairns said. “Some forgot whether they had sent their scores to colleges.”

But Harvard College’s Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 disagreed with the positive assessment of the change, noting ending Score Choice may rob students of the freedom to experiment with different tests to find new strengths.

“Students have been served well by the risk-free opportunity to test themselves by the national standard without a feeling of jeopardy,” she said. “I think [the end of Score Choice] will reduce the perceived opportunity for experimentation.”

Harvard Students agreed with McGrath Lewis’ sentiments.

“It’ll discourage people from trying out things they might not excel at,” said Ben P. Erickson ’04.

According to O’Reilly, students’ admissions chances should not hampered by eliminating the Score Choice option.

“If multiple scores are submitted, [college admissions offices] use the highest score,” O’Reilly said. He said that policy will continue even when students are no longer able to review their scores before sending them to schools.

“To a certain extent the admissions process is a trust process,” O’Reilly said. “The student tells them fairly intimate stuff, and trusts that they will make their decision in the student’s best interest.”

While McGrath Lewis said that the change in policy might be problematic for students, she agreed that Harvard’s admissions policies will remain the same.

“We pay attention to the three highest scores, and students often send more than three,” she said. “[The admissions]process [is] laden with good information of which scores are only a small part,” she said.

Students already accept that colleges will be able to see all of their SAT I scores, regardless of how many times they take the test, McGrath Lewis noted.

“I don’t think there’s any concern taking the SAT I more than once. Somehow that same logic has not seemed to apply to SAT II tests,” McGrath Lewis said.

O’Reilly noted that eliminating the score choice will be cheaper for students, who in the past had to pay to send reports to colleges after previewing their scores.

But he could not say whether the change will affect the number of students taking SAT II tests.

“We may see some lost income with fewer students testing or students taking fewer tests,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be major.”

Cairns said that the new change will not change her advice to students.

“I will still encourage my sophomores to take the SAT IIs,” Cairns said.

The Score Choice option was first implemented in 1993 as an “attempt to give students a low stakes testing opportunity,” O’Reilly said.

The change will not affect any students taking tests this spring.