Kudos to some student reporting at Baylor University’s Lariat Online that broke a story about the school trying to buy its way to better SAT scores among their admitted freshman class. The scandal made its way into today’s Inside Higher Ed and New York Times.
Baylor offered a $300 bookstore credit and a $1,000 merit aid reward to accepted students who would agree to re-take the SAT for a better score. By doing this, the school managed to raise its average score for incoming freshman from 1200 to 1210. As I’ve written before, many schools are actually considering moving away from using the SAT as a primary factor for admittance, mostly because it skews classes toward the white and well off.
It seems weird that while many schools are trending away from this rigid test, Baylor’s administrators are not only embracing it, but trying to cheat their way to a 10-point higher average score. It just goes to show what lengths schools will go to to keep their spots in those terrible annual rankings printed by U.S. News and World Report.
Cross posted at Pushback.
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