The future of the SAT test, currently a primary determinant of a student’s college admittance, may be jeopardized, following a statement by University of California President Richard Atkinson’s last week saying that he believes the test should no longer be a requirement for UC entrance.

"I want examinations that are directly tied to the curriculum," Atkinson told abcnews.com. "The SATs are really vague…it’s almost impossible to determine what they are measuring."

Courtesy of ucop.edu Atkinson suggests UC schools discontinue SAT use in admissions.

In a February 18 speech made to the American Council on Education, Atkinson said he was worried that "the overemphasis on the SAT is compromising [America’s] educational system." He pointed to the example of students who spend hours a day memorizing SAT test-taking methods rather than strengthening their overall reading and writing skills.

If Atkinson’s plan is approved by the UC Board of Regents, students would be free from the SAT requirement as early as 2003. This would make UC the largest school system in the nation that does not require the SATs. Currently, there are some 300 American liberal arts colleges which do not require the SAT.

Educators agree that such a step would greatly decrease the nationwide relevance of the SATs since UC applicants make up a bulk of the students who take the yearly SAT.

"UC students are the biggest users of the SAT, probably, in the whole country," Paul Kanarek of the Princeton Review said. "It’s inconceivable to me that the test will survive as a national instrument once UC does away with it."

Pomona President Peter Stanley appeared in an interview on the NBC Nightly News with Dan Rather February 17 to argue in favor of using the SAT as one aspect of the admissions process.

"No one I know proposes using the SAT alone," Stanley said. "But it does tell us something that colleges need to know."

Stanley is a former President of the nonprofit College Board, which owns and administers the SAT. The current Board president holds a similar opinion, stating in a written statement that "dropping the SAT makes no more sense than dropping classroom grades."

Proponents of the SAT argue that it acts as an important nation wide standard. A 4.0 GPA at one high school may be much harder to achieve than a 4.0 at a less academically challenging high school, but the SAT is the same everywhere.

Critics, however, have long argued that the 75-year-old test is outdated and biased against minority and low-income students.

Atkinson said that last year alone, over 150,000 high school students paid more than $100 million to educational centers such as The Princeton Review and Kaplan for enrollment in SAT-prep courses.

More desperate cases include parents paying psychologists to say their child has a learning disability that qualifies him or her for extra time on the SAT, as reported by The Los Angeles Times.

Parents and students aren’t the only ones affected by the obsession with high SAT scores, Atkinson said. He fears that high school teachers feel pressured to teach the SAT, that college admissions officers are encouraged to draw the highest scoring students to their schools, and that alumni rely on SAT scores to boost their school’s rank and therefore inflate the value of their diploma.

In fact, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that schools manipulate scores to attain higher rankings in publications like U.S. News and World Report and The Princeton Review.

In light of these arguments, Atkinson recommends that UC move toward a "more holistic" evaluation of student qualifications, as well as the development of a standardized test that better parallels high school curriculum. If his proposal is adopted, UC will begin to develop such a test, and require only the three SAT II scores in the meantime: one in English, one in mathematics and a third in a subject of the student’s choice.

The Claremont Colleges, for the time being, stand by Stanley’s support of the SAT as a necessary part of a comprehensive approach to assessing admittance qualification.

"It is understandable that the Colleges use a wide range of factors to determine eligibility," Pitzer President Marilyn Chapin Massey said. "Tests like the SAT and ACT are one of the factors we use, but academic performance in high school carries more weight."

Claremont McKenna President Pamela Gann said that "[CMC’s admission] process, as well as the process at all highly selective colleges, is already very holistic." She noted that such colleges "have much more flexibility in their processes than do public institutions."

"We usually give the most weight to high school performance in the context of school quality and course program rigor. We also look at test scores, including SAT I, SAT II, AP and IB. For some students the SAT I scores might be more important while for others the scores might be less important," she said.

In addition, she pointed out that "The College Board’s research for college students across the country indicates that there exists a positive correlation between SAT I scores, when taken into consideration along with high school performance, and the first year of college grades."