Colleges scramble amid SAT glitch / Error lowers test scores of 4,000 hopefuls

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Colleges scramble amid SAT glitch / Error lowers test scores of
4,000 hopefuls
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 08:49:12 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
To: undisclosed-recipient:;


Colleges scramble amid SAT glitch
Error lowers test scores of 4,000 hopefuls

By Marcella Bombardieri and Tracy Jan, Globe Staff  |  March 9, 2006

College admissions officers in Massachusetts and elsewhere yesterday
scrambled to deal with the applications of thousands of students
whose SAT scores were too low because of a technical glitch, one of
the biggest mistakes ever made on the high-stakes exam.

Many universities, including the most selective schools, do not
finalize admissions decisions until the end of the month, but are
well along in the process. Officials at some schools, including the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said they had already mailed
out some acceptances and rejections. They will reexamine the
applications of students who were affected by the College Board's
mistake to see if the outcome would have been different.

Another worry, high school counselors say, is that students might
have given up on applying to certain highly competitive schools
because of the faulty scores, and now they have missed the deadline
to apply.

Officials at The College Board, which administers the test, said
technical glitches led to errors in roughly 4,000 students' October
2005 tests, resulting in some students not getting credit for some of
their correct answers. The company, which is still investigating what
happened, relies on computers at a facility in Austin, Texas, to scan
students' answers from test sheets. The errors were reported
yesterday in The New York Times.

The College Board has told UMass-Amherst that roughly 220 high school
students who indicated to the company that they planned to apply to
UMass received lower scores than they should have.

The timing could hardly have been worse, said Kevin Kelly, the
director of admissions at UMass. The university, which is in the
middle of mailing 12,000 decisions to applicants this week, will
revisit the applications of some students. Kelly was not sure how
many of the 220 students followed through on applying to UMass.

...

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/03/09/colleges_scramble_amid_sat_glitch/


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