SATs Appear to Have More Drawbacks
By Chris McElhatton

Many students find the SATs to be long, monotonous tests, and some feel that they are quite nearly a waste of time. With the recent changes that the college board has made to the Standard Assessment Tests, many colleges have also begun to doubt the integrity of the standardized tests. Despite the previous strengths of the test in measuring college-bound students’ academic prowess, the SATs have come under a lot of criticism.
The newest criticism has arisen from one of the test’s largest shortcomings - its allowance for mis-grading. The October 2005 test was the hallmark for these occurrences. Unfortunately for the recently reformed tests, 2005 has led to a number of errors in the testing, which happen to be the first of its kind. What was the problem? Well, it would appear that the enormous amount of rain the United States has been receiving in the last six months has caused more problems than just pot holes and overfilled reservoirs. The October test became so wet that the answer sheets expanded, resulting in a mis-calibration. Automatic grading machines were not properly aligned with the answer sheets anymore, resulting in many test takers losing anywhere from 10 to 200 points total. Although only 4,600 of those who took the exam were affected by the under grading, all tests from the year 2005 were regraded by hand.
Unfortunately, another batch of 1,600 tests were set aside for re-examination, with the results of the new grades about to be published this week. For many students, this would explain the immense amount of time that it took for the College Board to send out the October scores. Luckily, though, there have not been problems like this before. Chiara Coletti, College Board employee, stated that, “There has never been an error of this kind.” So are more errors anticipated? Not likely. Though the errors may seem large and incredibly unfortunate, they only affected 0.8% of the tests. In addition to the error’s containment, the incident has spurred College Board to seek out more technical solutions to the already unpopular test. While the exam will not be taken away anytime soon, the errors may be seen by some as a sign of things to come. While this is more or less unfounded, if students want to avoid the hassle of the now six hour long SATs, there is still the option of taking the ACT. This option has become even more popular with students, and may eventually replace the SATs.