According to a recent article in the Washington Post, high-achieving students can now apply to George Mason University without taking the SAT.

Admissions officials said high school students who rank in the top 20 percent of their class and have a grade-point average of 3.5 or better can apply without submitting SAT scores. Instead, the students will be required to submit two extra letters of recommendation from their teachers and will have to write an essay.

The dean of admissions says that SAT scores are "a poor predictor of how those students would fare at the university" for students who did well in high school. Hopefully, if other large institutions follow suit, it will begin to alleviate some of the excessive pressure currently placed on standardized tests.

Related posts (auto-generated):

1. Testing Teachers From the CNN article "Commission urges tracking of teacher progress," notes about a "special commission" involved in the revision of NCLB: Teachers should be evaluated...
2. NCLB Making Progress? A recent report from the Center on Education Policy suggests that students are improving on state reading and math tests. More than that: the achievement...
3. More on Fairfax’s Anti-NCLB Stance Marc Fisher's article is appropriately biting, and as far as I'm concerned, he nails it. He's reporting Jack Dale's refusal to administer standardized reading tests...
4. A Positive Stance While I disagree with the way NCLB has been conceived and enforced, I agree with this approach from teachers to students: We decided it was...
5. Working Backwards to Assessment I'm saying: we should teach to the test, as long as it's an appropriate test, and to discover what an appropriate test is for each...

| Print This