Northwestern’s admissions process remained relatively unscathed by the grading error on the October 2005 SAT Reasoning Test, said Keith Todd, director of undergraduate admissions.
Though about 40 applicants had incorrect SAT scores because of the error, the College Board notified NU of the problem weeks before acceptance decisions were made.
The applicants’ actual scores were about 20 to 30 points higher than their reported scores, Todd said.
“This is the first time in my experience that something like this has happened,” he said. “As long as the numbers aren’t too different and not too many people are affected, this is part of what we build into the evaluation process.
“If there were thousands of people affected, it would be a different story,” he said.
But moving on from the mix-up may not be so easy for the College Board, which oversees the exam, and the testing company it hired. An unidentified high school senior filed a lawsuit Friday against the College Board and its scanning vendor, Pearson Educational Measurement, because his exam was mistakenly scored too low, according to an Associated Press report.
Of the almost 500,000 students who took the test in October, 4, 411 will receive higher scores than originally reported. Pearson discovered the problem in January.
The majority of exams deviated by 100 points or less, but one score was incorrect by as much as 450 points out of the possible 2,400. About 600 students received better scores than they earned, but those will not be corrected.
The problem was first uncovered when two students requested in December that their tests be scored by hand. In January, the tests were found to have significant score discrepancies, said Jennifer Topiel, spokeswoman for the College Board.
After the discovery, 1.5 million exams from October, November, December and January were re-scanned, although October was the only month found to have problematic scoring.
Pearson was asked to investigate the problem in early February, and colleges were notified of the issue in March.
Humidity, which causes the paper to expand, is thought to be one of the two primary causes of the incorrect scoring. Faint and incomplete marks are also being blamed.
George Birman, a Glenbrook South High School senior, in Glenview, Ill., did not take the October SAT, but was still upset with the news.
“I couldn’t believe a service like that would make an error of that magnitude,” he said. “When I took the SAT, the thought that there could be an error never crossed my mind. The last thing you want to worry about is someone screwing up your scores.”
Topiel also said the negative backlash has been exaggerated in the press.
“We spoke directly to students and counselors and parents, and they have, for the most part, been very understanding,” she said. “Electronic errors happen, but the SAT is something that still rings hard and true for many people.”
The College Board is taking precautions to prevent similar errors from happening again. It has hired a consulting firm to perform a comprehensive review, with particular emphasis on the scanning process, Topiel said.
The College Board is notifying the students, their high schools and the colleges to which they applied about score changes. It will refund all registration and score-submission fees associated with the October SAT.
Reach Virginia VanZanten at [email protected].
