I used to teach at a high school where students took the SAT (once) for free, courtesy of the district, because otherwise most of them wouldn't have taken it and a substantial percentage wouldn't have been able to afford to take it.

This is a gift to the test-prep companies, and nothing else.

Do college application forms no longer ask you to list your highest score for each section?

Yes. And it would also be good if students were made aware of their options.

Leaving SAT scores aside, when I was an undergraduate I didn't know that I could re-take courses to improve my grade. I was scared out of my head, convinced that any B I got would condemn me to a lifetime of secretarial work. The US educational system as it happens is very forgiving and that, I believe, is a good thing. But I imagined that it was a sudden death system superimposed on a larger social system without safety nets--and about the latter part I was right.

Now, as a professor (even though I did get a B in German II) I encourage students to play the system for all it's worth. It's especially poignant at this time of year as students have just gotten their grades and some are in shock. But I tell them: don't worry about that D or F in logic--retake the course at a community college for pocket change and wipe it out. And I tell my advisees: keep your course load light, take classes during summer and winter intersession and take all the pass-fail options you can to max out GPA.

I just happen to believe that persistence, and even shrewd game-playing, is a good thing. And if that's cynical remember the system is a miserable mechanism for sorting out winners and losers in a Hobbesian struggle for scarce goods--where only a few people can get interesting jobs and most are going to spend their lives at jobs where every day is daily jail, where they're on the rock pile doing miserable, boring, mind-killing drudge work, where everyone has to fight for all they're worth to avoid that misery.

There are many free and low cost nonprofit SAT prep programs out there - some of which are actually better than the for-profit companies.

This is just a ploy by ETS to get people to take more tests. More tests equals free money. None of this is in the interest of the students or the colleges. Pure profit.

"Affordable" is always a relative term. I teach ACT prep classes to economically disadvantaged high school students and what worries most of them is the cost of taking the test -- never mind the cost of re-taking it. I don't have anything but anecdotal evidence to offer, but I don't know a single student who re-took either the ACT or SAT who didn't score higher on the second attempt. But most of the students I teach can barely afford their first attempt, so they take their prep class very seriously. And none of the stress-busting tips I offer them can make up for the lack of cash in their pockets.

Dumb idea -- just like the SAT itself.

A lot of this discussion is taking place in the vacuum of current college admission plans - that is, the largest cohort of students who have driven up average scores at a host of schools making repeated test taking more a necessity than an option. Two things outside of the test/admissions world probably have more impact on this than anything - an economic downturn that will make financial need more of a driver in admission choices and decisions, and the same downturn reducing the overall population fighting to get into schools. When I took the SATs, in the midst of "baby bust", schools needed us more than we needed them; with scores over 650, I considered retaking them for a small gain... and chose not to; I was accepted everywhere I applied except Harvard, a result I could, and did, live with. There's a point, for many good students and test takers, where repeating the test for a small gain just won't make sense, when the pressure is off.

And the next few years, I think, will see some reduction in pressure on students to outperform crazy expectations about the test; it will also be a good time for schools to re-emphasize that admissions is about more than test scores. In that regard, I think the "blended" score reporting will be a detail, and not the big issue; reducing the weight of the test scores... that's really the key here.

This is the end of "blended" score reporting.

Student financial need will have little impact at the top schools since over 75% of their admits are from the upper income quintile and at HYP poor and lower middle class students can already attend for free.

University financial need will play a limited role so expect to see an increase in admits of students who can pay full freight - international students at the privates and out-of-state students at the better state research universities. A small percentage of rich kids may be replace by even wealthier students.

Overall, this does not have as large of an impact as everyone seems to think it will. The ACT already does this so the SAT is just matching the policy and not giving an advantage to wealthy students who can prepare for both tests and choose which test to submit to colleges.

As for the free SAT courses, most of the ones I've seen online like number2.com are very basic and low-quality. The typical for-profits are also low-quality and they are also expensive. I would highly suggest doing research into online programs like brightstorm.com and prepme.com as they seem far more affordable.

I recently started teaching at the college level, and as such I don't know much about high school and education in general.

I was shocked when another professor told me that some students are granted special status that gives them a longer time limit on the SATs. The topic came up because I usually have a couple of students each semester that I have to give extra time on exams, per the college's Office of Disabilities.

After watching one particular student take three hours for a test that should have taken an hour or so, I remarked to my office mate that I don't see where the system is doing this kid any favors. How is he going to hold down a job, if he spends large portions of the day staring off into space?

I think instead of making all kinds of accomodations, especially ones that will not be tolerated in the "real world", that student would have been better served if somewhere along the line, someone worked with him to improve his concentration.

I'm not saying that students should never be accomodated (e.g. I had one very inspirational legally blind student) but simply granting extra time for no particular reason seems odd to me. Rather than dealing with the problem, it is pushed on down the line.

Anyway, I recently read that the low point in average SAT scores was for students born in 1963 (or so). That made sense, when you think of how the pool of students taking SATs was expanded after the civil rights and women's rights movements. But "improvement" in test scores made after that does not adequately account for all of the rule changes, like multiple takes or extended time.

As I recall from my college admissions advising (10 yrs ago), we were told schools really put weight on your top score on each part - so a second testing that beat your earlier verbal but was lower than your math score was a good thing (the high score showed your potential). Don't know if that was true or still relevant, but this 'score choice' business seems to knock that opportunity out. So, does the 'look at your best individual score' approach hold sway?

"remember the system is a miserable mechanism for sorting out winners and losers in a Hobbesian struggle for scarce goods--where only a few people can get interesting jobs and most are going to spend their lives at jobs where every day is daily jail"

And you think this is determined by GPA?

Too cute.

This is a gift to the test-prep companies, and nothing else

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