Friday, October 26, 2012
The Smoke Signal
Critical Reading
www.thesmokesignal.org
Opinion 7
College Board: Overcharging?
By Ishan Goyal Staff Writer
Directions: For each question in this section, select the best answer from among the choices given and fill in the corresponding circle on the answer sheet. Example: Which of the following is true? A) More students in the Class of 2012 took the ACT than the SAT I. B) College Board is a non-profit organi- zation. C) Several colleges boycotted the SAT in 2005. D) All of the above. E) None of the above. A high SAT score is almost required at MSJ. Students get stigmatized or categorized depending on this score and it acts like a status symbol. By the time October or June comes around, the campus is full of students studying material and unconsciously reciting their vocabulary. The unanswered question is: where exactly is the money students pay for the SAT and AP tests actually going? College Board’s mission, as stated on their website, is to “[provide] students a path to college opportunities.” They also classify themselves as a non-profit membership organization. Strangely, students have to pay about
$50 for an SAT reasoning test, $23 as a base price for the subject tests, and about $90 for each AP exam. To top these pricey tests off, there are ridiculous additional fees that are imposed for things like being late, asking for refunds or score reports, and even asking to take a listening test. These costs are an even bigger concern to low-income families, who are already struggling to cope with their regular bills. Studies by the New York Times have shown that family income directly correlates with SAT score, meaning if a family is rich, their student’s score is likely to be higher than that of a student from a poor family. The SAT is thus being unfair with its fees because of the advantage it gives to students from a richer background. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of College Board, Gaston Caperton, has a salary of around one million dollars, while that of Barack Obama is $400,000. Caperton claimed in an interview with the New York Times that a majority of the fees went towards paying for proctors, location, and staff. In 2009 however, Americans for Education Reform reported that 8.6 percent of College Board’s total revenue was profit, a value that should be closer to zero to stay true to the spirit of any organization that asserts itself as non-profit. In a recent Bloomberg article, previous dean of admissions
help your counselor help you devote quality time to 740 students? But it seems that MSJ seniors themselves may not actually be taking full advantage of the Staff Writer resources that counselors have provided. MSJ counselors believe that if October – that time of the year again, when seniors are busy finishing those the students have participated in the essays, sending their transcripts, and numerous workshops and info sessions, securing last-minute recommendation such as College Night, and have personally letters. The fall months are a period of visited them, then they truly have taken stress for seniors, parents, and counselors. advantage of most resources. But there is Because the counselors write letters and still something that most seniors aren’t process the paperwork, it’s undeniably doing: “I think most students are not crucial for seniors to build a good doing enough research,” says Counselor relationship with them. Some may not Merri Blum when referring to the process be able to take advantage of the myriad of selecting schools. “Some students are resources that MSJ’s counselors provide. applying to schools that are just not a good Some may complain that counselors fit.” One of the most important things to aren’t taking care of them – after all, how can one overworked counselor keep in mind when applying for colleges is to find a place where someone is a good fit and has a fair chance of getting in. Everyone’s got different interests, passions, and personal preferences – so what’s the point of applying to the same schools with big, prestigious names and admission rates of five or six percent just because everyone else is doing it? Why are MSJ students every year pushing themselves to apply to a school that’s somewhat arbitrarily ranked high on the US News & World Report with a one-size-fitsall-attitude and without a drews an ne an de more compelling reason to er, and lindsay rott merri blum, counselors apply, aside from its name? Students should research other schools that may not By Genevieve Huang
of The University of Chicago, Ted O’Neill, states in response to this statistic that “The College Board is more interested in marketing and selling things than it is in its primary responsibility of promoting equity and educational opportunity.” This company is supposedly helping students explore college options and providing them with useful resources, but it is also making a hefty sum of profit. College Board isn’t the only culprit of this scandal. Joining them, American College Testing (ACT) and the Educational Testing Service (ETS) also pay their executives large salaries. The legal definition of the term non-profit only applies to an organization that uses its surplus revenues to achieve its goals rather than distributing them as profits. The College Board, ACT, and ETS violate these requirements yet they continue to slip by and are also receiving tax breaks for their non-profit status. There are two ways of dealing with this outrage. The first is to classify these organizations as corporations that would be taxed and whose profits could be paid to the shareholders and executives. The second is to boycott the use of these standardized tests, which occurred in 2005 when several colleges threatened to drop the SAT as a qualification unless a writing section was added. Dean Zerbe, a
have as big a name but are better suited, whether it’s because of their environment or because of a few special niche programs. Often, a student won’t know what he or she wants, asking a counselor for help and applying to a school that’s billed as the “best.” Lacking any personal experience and justified reason to apply, students will be shooting in the dark, and counselors will be confused on how to write the secondary school report and recommendation letter, making the process extremely inefficient. “Students have to be proactive and take some responsibility,” says Counselor Deanne Andrews. “It’s not fair for students to expect an insightful letter without actually having personal reasons as to why they would like to go somewhere.” So how can students help the counselors help them? For the students who don’t know what they want, it’s their responsibility to obtain real world experience in everything they can and figure out what they like. For those who know what they would like to see themselves doing 10 years ahead, using Naviance, the program teachers briefly introduced to sophomores during the Career Unit, may be the solution. With assessments, MSJ admission data, and statistics like the average SAT score of a school’s admittees, Naviance is a great, yet underused, 24/7 tool for anything related to colleges. Some upperclassmen may have forgotten about Naviance because completing its quizzes isn’t worth points, but they are losing out on an extremely useful guide. More than that, Naviance boasts an “advanced search” capability that allows students to select the certain qualities they desire in schools
former senior on the tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, said to the Bloomberg News that “Congress should take a hard eye at these taxexempt testing companies that pay big-time salaries and seem to want to shake every dollar possible out of the pockets of students applying to college.” Students probably wouldn’t mind if colleges dropped this test as a requirement and instead focused on grades and extracurricular activities. These measures must be taken to prevent College Board and ACT from monopolizing the market of students who are trying to get into college. Even the public has joined in on criticizing College Board who recently received a “D” grade from the US Better Business Bureau. They professed that the company didn’t even meet its nonprofit requirements and needed to be changed. MSJ students should not be forced to pay exorbitant prices just to improve their chances of getting into college. College Board promises to help students succeed and inspire them before they reach college. Perhaps they could do this job better by adhering to the spirit of being a nonprofit company. ▪
STOP HERE and pulls up the corresponding list of universities that offer those features. By doing some research on Naviance, students can proactively narrow down the schools that they like and believe will be an appropriate fit. The work that students can do without counselors is much more comprehensive than what can be done in a half-hour meeting filled with openended questions like “Where should I go to college?” and can make the following meetings more focused, streamlined, and efficient. Taking responsibility and finding out which schools are the right choices shows maturity, which both high school counselors and college admission representatives like to see. Being prepared and knowing what one’s wishes and options are smoothens the application process and helps alleviate the stress involved. ▪
photo by staff writer supriya yelimeli, www.greenlightoffice.com, www.nyapplecountry.com, www.backgroundsy.com