Bismarck, North Dakota - News

High school seniors, your waiting time is almost over.

Now and for the next few weeks, college admissions deans are "in committee" -sequestered, huddled and locked in their ivory tower offices. There, they pore over the grades, essays, letters and what some may see as the magic make-or-break SAT and ACT scores of more than 1 million future college freshmen.

Only the truth is that, as more colleges than ever seek variety and diversity, getting top scores no longer is the sure-fire combination for success.

"The SAT, for better or worse, has been held out as the Holy Grail of acceptance. It's not," said Dennis Trotter, dean of admissions at Pennsylvania's Franklin & Marshall College.

Today, nearly 25 percent of U.S. News and World Report's top 100 colleges have begun to de-emphasize standardized tests, a trend that began with Maine's Bowdoin College in 1969.

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing's Web site, www.fairtest.org, lists more than 730 four-year public and private colleges out of about 2,400 that have made the college boards less important or optional. The list includes Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Middlebury and Bennington colleges in Vermont, Mount Holyoke and Holy Cross colleges in Massachusetts, and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

"Grinnell College is a place that does require them, and they are important," said William Sumner, dean of admission and financial aid at Grinnell in Iowa, one of the country's leading liberal arts colleges. "But they are precisely half as important as what's most important, which is the school record.

"People typically think two things get them in or keep them out of a college," Sumner continued. "Ninety-five percent of what gets them in or keeps them out is their school record."

Now, as you wait over the next month for that thick letter (accepted!) or the thin one (sorry!), we offer a few facts and fables about the college boards that may or may not make you feel better.

The better your SAT or ACT scores, the smarter you are.

"Your score on the ACT has no bearing on how smart you are," said Ken Gullette, spokesman for Iowa City-based ACT Inc., which distributes and grades the standardized test.

College admission officers are aware that the SAT and ACT are reasoning and assessment tests. They show only to what degree a student has mastered a certain limited body of material offered in high school. It doesn't measure creative thinking, complex ideas, leadership or drive or other qualities that make fine applicants.

The richer and more educated your parents, the better your scores are likely to be.

True. College admission counselors know this, too. It is one of the prime reasons many colleges have begun putting less emphasis on SAT and ACT scores.

Recent and historic numbers collected the last 40 years by the U.S. Department of Education bear out the trend. The most recent statistics for 2005, for example, show that students who come from families that make more than $100,000 a year score, on average, 130 points higher on the SAT than students from families making $10,000 a year or less.

Your SAT or ACT scores predict how successful you'll be throughout college.

No. Those who administer the SAT and ACT fully acknowledge that the tests predict only how well a student is likely to do in his or her freshman year at any particular college.

"Everybody wants their children to be prepared for college," said Gullette, the ACT spokesman. "But to be a success in school and life requires more than getting a 36 on the ACT."

It's smart to submit good SAT or ACT scores even to schools that say the tests are optional.

True. Showing off good scores can only help, even at schools that do not treat them with the weight or importance they once had. Maine's Bowdoin College has been SAT-optional for nearly 40 years, but its admission office still looks at scores, said William Shain, Bowdoin's dean of admissions. "If you ask me to choose between a kid with terrific grades and fairly good scores and a kid with terrific scores and fairly good grades, the first kid has a better chance always."

But if both kids are equally great?

"The kid with the lower testing doesn't have the advantage."