Boycotting the Rankings

A number of American liberal arts colleges have refused to contribute to the reputational survey of the US News and World Report rankings. See insidehighered for the full story. This is a highly positive development since such surveys tend to be biased, self-confirming and opaque. The THES-QS "peer review" is perhaps the worst of the lot in these respects but other reputational surveys are probably little better.

Less positive is the news about Sarah Lawrence, a New York liberal arts college. This school no longer looks at the SAT scores of its applicants and therefore has been placed in the "unranked" category by USNWR, which counts SAT scores as a key indicator of student quality. There has been a fair bit of controversy about this but I doubt that Sarah Lawrence will suffer very much. The publicity will probably compensate for losing its place among the top liberal arts colleges.
Sarah Lawrence's action is, however, potentially very dangerous. The SAT is essentially an intelligence test and therefore is highly predictive of academic success and resistant to coaching. There is, it is true, a small scale industry devoted to boosting SAT scores but its claims are grossly exaggerated.

What will likely happen is that admission to Sarah Lawrence will be based on the evaluation of high school essays and performance in class including advanced placement courses and recommendations from teachers and counselors topped up with an array of interesting extra-curricular activities. It is more than likely that the admissions process will give an advantage to those whose parents can move to suburbs with good schools, provide a glut of stimulating activities that will be raw material for essays and provide advice, assistance, Internet access and transport for high school projects.

In short, ultimately admission to Sarah Lawrence -- and no doubt many other colleges eventually -- will be based on the ability to impress high school teachers and administrators and to have an interesting out of school life. In the end this is all far more dependent on parental wealth than an intelligence test.

If Sarah Lawrence's stand became widespread -- and it probably will -- then admission to many highly valued American colleges will be determined not by cognitive ability but by the social and communicative skills that can only be acquired by long and expensive socialisation.

What is baffling about this is that, as with the abolition of the 11-plus in Britain, such a development is led by intelligent and educated people people who surely must have gained enormously by the spread of standardised testing over the last century.