Starting in March, taking the SAT will get a little less stressful for many high-school juniors - but not necessarily for those applying to Penn.
However, both admissions officials and college consultants say that Penn's decision not to accept the College Board's Score Choice program will not affect the University's applicant pool.
Through Score Choice, high school students will be able to send colleges just their top scores. The trade-off is that applicants can only send the best scores from one sitting, not a composite of their best section scores.
But Eric Furda, Penn's dean of admissions, says Score Choice won't necessarily make high-school students' lives easier.
"The intent of this measure is to reduce stress for applicants, but I don't think it will do that," he said.
Despite Penn's current policy, Furda noted that admissions officers have no way of actually knowing how many times an applicant took the SAT and must trust that students are not sending a Score Choice report.
He added that it is "na've" to think that all applicants will send all their scores, but "we are relying on most to give us their full score set."
Furda also said he would be willing to reevaluate Penn's policy in the future "depending on student feedback and research."
Penn is not alone in its decision not to accept Score Choice. Other universities, including Cornell University, Stanford University and the University of Southern California have also decided to ask students for their complete testing history.
While the effect of Penn's decision remains to be seen, college consultants say that students will continue to apply to Penn in the same high numbers.
"I don't think that policy will discourage students from applying to those highly-selective colleges," said Martha Lyman, director of college advising at the Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts.
Counselors also say that re-implementing the Score Choice option, which was available in the 1990s for SAT II score reports, is unlikely to make students take the SAT more times.
Michael Chimes, director of college guidance at the Gill St. Bernard's School in New Jersey, remembers when that policy was in place.
"In my experience, I have not seen any connection between the Score Choice program and the number of times the students retake the SAT," he said. "If anything, it contributes an additional layer of confusion when the College Board promotes one policy very heavily and a small group of colleges decides to implement a different requirement," he added.
Overall, Chimes concluded, the program is unlikely to affect students' anxiety levels during the college application process.
