The College Board will likely decide to eliminate the nine-year-old Score Choice option, which allows students to decide which SAT II test scores are sent to colleges and which scores the schools will never see.
Though the Guidance and Admission Assembly Council -- a sub-committee of the company responsible for administering the SAT I and SAT II subject tests -- voted to eliminate the Score Choice policy in December, high school counselors and college administrators have only recently received the news of the change.
"It was their recommendation to get rid of Score Choice," SAT Program Executive Director Brian O'Reilly said. "The reason being that it was hurting students more than it was helping."
Unlike with the SAT I, a student who wishes to release an SAT II score to colleges must actively do so either through the College Board phone system or through their Web site.
O'Reilly said that students at less affluent schools were not as well informed about this policy because of a lack in proper guidance counseling.
"They were not realizing that they had those scores on hold," he said.
The Score Choice policy has come under fire from some college administrators for not properly representing students' complete records.
But Daniel Nichter, the head guidance counselor at Radnor High School -- a public school located in an affluent suburb 15 miles west of Philadelphia -- does not think that Score Choice misrepresented students.
"I don't think we're sending them packaged students," Nichter said of Radnor.
Nichter said that though most of his students take advantage of Score Choice, many of them do not need to use it.
"I don't see a lot of students taking the SAT II three or four times and submitting the best ones," he said.
"I'm sure it's probably not going to impact too much how I council kids," he added. "I would probably just say to wait."
Penn Undergraduate Admissions Dean Lee Stetson said that the College Board decision will not affect Penn policy.
"The change in policy regarding Score Choice will have no effect on our students applying to Penn," Stetson said. "We take the highest scores anyway, so it will be perfectly fine whatever the College Board decides."
However, Nichter acknowledged that though many colleges say that they accept the highest score, many students will feel added pressure.
"I think there would be some skepticism," Nichter said. "There is always concern about putting too much emphasis on one thing."
In order for the change to become official, it needs to first be approved by each of the College Board's six regional offices. The two regions that still have not voted -- the West and the Mid-West -- received their presentations this weekend.
Though it is not official, Nichter believes the policy will probably be approved within the next two weeks and that it will go into effect this fall.
"Whatever we do, it will not affect test takers this spring," he said. "It will not affect any scores earned through June of this year."
O'Reilly said that Score Choice was implemented nearly a decade ago to give students some control over what he described as a sometimes "mystical" process of applying to college.
But, despite College Board efforts to remind SAT II takers to release their scores, students were still not sending them to colleges.
"Over the years we have been told by college people that [Score Choice] was not functioning properly," O'Reilly said. "We were still hearing from guidance counselors and from colleges that people were not being admitted based not on a score, but because of lack of a score."
With these complaints in mind, GAAC recommended to eliminate the Score Choice policy last August.
"I think that [GAAC] became convinced that there was nothing they could do to fix Score Choice," O'Reilly said. "The vast majority of our members support this decision."
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