August 12, 2015

The SAT redesign has independent college consultants worried. Now, 99% of them are recommending that high school juniors take the ACT, and 71% are advising students to skip the revised SAT for at least the first go-round.

Nancy Griesemer, who writes great columns for the Washington Examiner, goes into greater detail. She and other consultants are concerned that the unknowns and increased rigor of the revised SAT could make for unpleasant surprises for the first group of students to take it.

“Despite efforts by the College Board to provide substantial advance information about the new test, counselors are uneasy about the Board’s ability to pull it all together in time for next year’s juniors,” she writes. “In fact, the vast majority of IECs surveyed (87%) indicated they were changing the advice they ordinarily give students about which college admission exams to take and when.”

One possible strategy: take the old SAT test this fall, and then the ACT in the spring. Then…in the senior year think about re-taking the tests and even tackling the revised SAT.

Honors News is a regular (not always daily) update, in brief, of recent news from honors colleges/programs and from the world of higher ed. Occasionally, a bit of opinion enters the discussion. These brief posts are by John Willingham, unless otherwise noted.