IT MAY be hard to believe, but it turns out that the education gurus who developed aptitude tests like the SAT, LSAT and GRE intended for them to be more than just the bane of every student's existence. They wanted the tests to give admissions officials at schools across the country - even across the globe - the ability to compare students to each other in a way they had never been able to do before. Unlike grade point averages and the quality of extracurricular activities, scores on aptitude tests couldn't be inflated or exaggerated. Ideally scores on these aptitude tests would be a measuring stick of sorts: uniform across situations and a fair, objective way to measure students' relative skill.
Whatever meaning the tests may have had is lost when something that is supposed to facilitate meritocracy has degenerated into another area of life where the privileged can pay to become even more privileged and those who have fewer resources are left even further behind. Steps must be taken to ensure that all interested students have access to test prep courses.
Whatever the formulators were trying to measure, it is clear that they have not given students a level playing field when it comes to succeeding on these tests. The test guru guys failed to take into account certain inherent flaws with the tests that prevent them from being completely objective. The testmakers certainly couldn't have imagined that an entire industry would spring up to virtually guarantee higher scores to anyone who could pay for them, meaning that the playing field is about as level as a mountain range.
There is no question that commercial test preparation courses such as those offered by Kaplan Educational Centers or the Princeton Review make a difference in students' test results. When it comes to the Law School Admissions Test, for example, Kaplan students average a seven-point increase in their scores. The advantage transfers to admissions too: Kaplan students usually end up attending the top law schools. Of students at the top 25 law schools, three out of four took a Kaplan prep course ("How to Even the Score: Test Prep," Time, April 20, 1998).
Simply looking at the exorbitant prices of test preparation courses makes it obvious that not everyone can afford the advantage these courses provide. Prices for test prep courses provided by Kaplan, one of the largest companies in the test preparation industry, hover around the thousand dollar mark. At the Kaplan Center in Charlottesville, a prep course costs $799 for the SAT, $999 for the GRE, $1,099 for the LSAT and a whopping $1,299 for the MCAT.
Varying levels of access to test prep courses may be a contributing factor to the racial disparity in test scores, considering that whites are more likely to take commercial courses than blacks. The California Law Review recently published a study that found disparities between blacks and whites when it comes to success on the LSAT. The study compared black and white applicants who attended the same colleges and had similar majors and grade point averages. It was found that minority students scored significantly lower on LSATs than white students with similar credentials. The gap was 9.2 points, large considering that the LSAT is only a 180-point test.
There has been talk of possible racial bias in the LSAT, but looking at what students did to prepare also could be instructive when searching for a source for the gap between the races. According to Time, whites more often opt for the expensive prep courses while minorities tend to take weekend crash courses. If fewer blacks are taking prep courses that, on average, give students' scores a seven point boost, it is not surprising that there is a racial disparity.
Some good solutions have been proposed, most notably giving students scholarships to test prep courses. Perhaps colleges also could cover the cost of hiring commercial test prep providers to work with their students, in the interest of providing more equal opportunities. Maybe Kaplan and the Princeton Review would even have it in them to offer their services at a discount, considering that their business surely would increase. By giving everyone access to test-prep help, anyone willing to do the extra work could take a course, whether they could afford it on their own or not.
Tests scores are crucial when it comes to graduate school admissions, and they therefore can have a huge effect on students' futures. In the case of law school admissions, students' LSAT scores and GPAs are the primary factors in admissions decisions, making LSAT scores essentially half of what gets them in. It is a high-stakes numbers game, and those with the resources to get a few extra points will win. Evening out students' access to test preparation courses will make the game a fairer one.
(Laura Sahramaa is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at lsahramaa@cavalierdaily.com.)
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