New Trend – No SAT Required
VCU and other universities are starting a trend to end the SAT for college. Karin Kapsidelis from the Richmond Times Dispatch reports.
VCU to rely on GPA, not SAT scores
Virginia Commonwealth University no longer will require applicants with a high school GPA of 3.3 or higher to submit SAT scores, President Michael Rao announced during his State of the University speech today.
Rao said the university will follow a national trend toward relying on the GPA as a better predictor of student success.
About 800 universities around the country, including four in Virginia, already have dropped the requirement. VCU is the first of the three research universities in Virginia to do so. The SAT still will be required for some programs, such as engineering, and for some of the university’s endowed scholarships.
Rao said VCU will not lower its quality for students who are admitted but would emphasize GPA . Also, Rao said, research has shown that the SAT has racial and socio-economic biases, and VCU’s internal research has verified that.
“We are not denying a transformative education to students who we know would flourish here just because they don’t have a certain SAT score,” Rao said.
“So beginning this fall, your ability to succeed at VCU will no longer depend on your ability to pass a test that’s fundamentally flawed.”
Comments
What happened to the research that showed that the SAT was by far the best predictor of success in college? Looks like diversity has knocked off another bit of research. Clearly, administrators are not known for high intelligence — only going along to get along.