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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, the new debate surrounding the SAT exams, did they get a bum rap? Some colleges that made SAT scores optional as a criterion for admission are now making them mandatory again.

There have been two recent articles in The New York Times, one a policy piece by columnist David Leonhardt, and the other a personal essay by the writer Emi Nietfeld, arguing that the SATs actually enhance the chances for diverse, disadvantaged, and marginalized high school students to get into college at all, to get into good colleges, not the other way around, as has been previously believed.

We'll talk to Emi Nietfeld, and take your calls now. Emi Nietfeld is a freelance journalist, best known as the author of Acceptance: A Memoir, published in 2022. Her New York Times op-ed is called How the SAT Changed My Life. Emi, thanks so much for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Emi Nietfeld: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Can you start, for listeners not familiar with your work, what some of your life was like when you were in high school, very difficult circumstances in multiple ways, and why you found solace, you use that word, not oppression, in studying for the SATs?

Emi Nietfeld: I had a really difficult adolescence. Both of my parents suffered from mental health issues. I myself was taken to the doctor. I received 12 different psychiatric medications between the ages of 12 and 14. I had always been a studious child, but when I was 14, I was sent to a locked residential treatment center. One of those places with bars over the windows and a padded isolation room.

Instead of going to high school, there was an onsite classroom, where our education was really reading aloud from books and doing basic math worksheets. I had always dreamed about escaping my family's chaos to go to college, but more and more, that just felt like it was totally out of reach. That really changed for me when a staff member got me a library copy of Barron's guide to the ACT.

Brian Lehrer: The other standardized test.

Emi Nietfeld: The other standardized test. I wanted an SAT book, but the ACT was all they had. I was just going to take whatever I could get. Suddenly, all these hours spent in quiet time, just sitting alone in my room, between various punitive "therapies", suddenly, I could use that time to catch up on all of the schooling that I missed when I was in and out of the hospital, or dealing with family stuff.

For the first time, I really felt agency and hope. Even though I didn't have the type of education that my peers had, I still had a shot at getting into college. And that--

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] Yes. Go ahead. No, you go.

Emi Nietfeld: Well, that was something that would continue, as the next year, I ended up in foster care. After that, I got a scholarship to go to a boarding school, but I spent breaks homeless. I ended up with five or six different high schools on my transcript, a very, very complicated academic record, but luckily, I did have this objective number that could show colleges, "Hey, I am ready to be a student."

Brian Lehrer: Spoiler alert, you got into Harvard, [chuckles] but the conventional wisdom is that the SATs should have worked against you, or the ACTs. That you didn't have the advantages of a relatively comfortable life and educational context, or, presumably, the money for test prep, maybe you did, once you got to the boarding school. Even in addition, the test questions might be culturally inconsistent with your life experience. Why do you think some of that conventional wisdom is wrong?

Emi Nietfeld: There is well-known data that shows that higher standardized test scores are correlated with higher household income, and also with being white or Asian. If you're coming from a prep school and a wealthy family, you are expected to have a higher test score, but part of what these debates around standardized tests left out, for a couple of years, is the fact that almost every element of a college application is correlated with privilege.

A sociologist recently sent me articles showing how connected the college essay is to family income. So many of those concerns around coaching, preparation, cultural relevance, that is even more true for things like teacher recommendation letters, or what extracurricular activities a young person has access to. When Dartmouth-- Who was one of the first Ivy League schools, this year, to reinstate the test.

When they did so, they announced the results of an analysis, where they found that even though lower-income and racial minority students had lower test scores on average, they would still help them get in, because Dartmouth was not just looking at, "Okay, which of our applicants have the absolute highest scores? Let's accept them." They, and many other colleges who practice holistic admissions, were saying, "Let's look at this number in context."

Even if a student has a score that's much lower than average, if they're coming from a high school that's under-resourced, that score might be incredible, and it might be a huge sign of their potential.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. You write in your personal essay that, "When I took the actual SAT, I was ashamed of my score. Had submitting it been optional, I most likely wouldn't have done it because I suspected my score was lower than the prep school applicants I was up against." Exactly what Dartmouth found in the analysis that led it to reinstate testing requirements.

"When you grow up the way I did," the way you did, "It's difficult to believe that you are ever good enough," but there's that curve, if that's the right word, that they were looking at SAT scores based on if you had a higher score than a lot of people in similar circumstances, not necessarily than a lot of people in more elite circumstances, that was a good sign, and one that couldn't be replaced by how you did in school, is, I guess, the argument that you're making.

Emi Nietfeld: Absolutely. What Dartmouth found is, they went through thousands of applications that they had received. They found all of these students who were coming from disadvantaged circumstances, who, under their test optional admissions, had simply chosen not to submit their scores. They were able to say, "A bunch of these students would have gotten in. They would have been accepted to Dartmouth if they had submitted their scores, but because they didn't, we rejected them."

Brian Lehrer: Because of that, do you favor making the SAT mandatory at schools generally, because not every family, not every high school student, not every high school guidance counselor is going to have the knowledge of the context that you've just been laying out, to make the right decision for their less advantaged students whose SATs scores may look only okay?

Emi Nietfeld: I think for a few years, everybody thought test-optional admissions were just a win-win. You could submit if you had good scores, it would help you, and you could withhold if you weren't certain, and it wouldn't hurt you, but people really ignored the amount of chaos that this added into the system, where, really, the students who had the most resources and counseling, those students were the best able to make an informed decision in whether or not to submit scores.

I don't believe that every college in America should require the SAT or the ACT. I think it really depends on the university, what they value, what their teaching is like, what they need. I also think that at these elite colleges, requiring these scores makes a lot of sense. In a way, I think it evens the playing field that every person has to take it, where you can't say, "Oh, I went to this well-known private high school. I have these glowing teacher recommendations, I can just skip it."

That feels a little bit unfair to me, when people who are coming from harder circumstances feel the need to prove themselves, it makes that calculus a little bit easier. Also, at these universities, it's really, really hard to tell students apart, because now, so many high school students are graduating with a 4.0 GPA. A huge number of applicants are valedictorians, and it's really hard for elite universities to tell students apart. The SAT and the ACT are one way that you can do that.

Brian Lehrer: Anybody else? Listeners, have a similar experience, or, for that matter, an opposite experience, and want to push back? Any college counselors at high schools or people who work in college and university admissions offices want to call in on this, the new debate surrounding the SAT exams? Did they get a bum rap? Do they actually help people from disadvantaged and marginalized backgrounds get into colleges, get into good colleges, not the other way around, as has been previously believed?

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, for Emi Nietfeld, best known as the author of Acceptance: A Memoir, published in 2022. She's now a freelance journalist and has written this New York Times op-ed called How the SAT Changed My Life. Call or text, 212-433-9692. Jason, on the Upper West Side, I think, has some relevant experience. Jason, you’re on WNYC. Hello.

Jason: Hi, Brian. Long time, first time. I just wanted to call and do agree with your guest, that preparation is key and can get you there, no matter what your background is. I've been an elite private tutor in Manhattan for over 20 years, and one of the big complaints is that people worry that tutoring makes the SAT unfair, but the test makers say, "Oh, the studies show that only tutoring increases." They're pretty modest, but they don't look at the kind of tutoring that we do.

These programs that we offer to Manhattan elite, with over a year of intensive work, it can produce 400-point increases, maybe more. I just want people to understand that it really is a learnable test. If you put in the time, like your guest did, right? She bought the Barron's book. You do 12 practice tests instead of one, you can get really amazing results. There are great affordable resources out there if you know where to look.

Buy the prep books. Khan Academy has great material, I feel that's a good place to start. My website, Resolve Prep, has tons of practice tests and problems, video explanations, for me, if you want to get that elite tutor experience, instead of charging $500 an hour, like I do to all the wealthy Manhattan people, the website's only $5 a month.

Brian Lehrer: Emi, any reaction to Jason's story?

Emi Nietfeld: I think there's often a misconception that the only studying that works for the SAT is with a tutor, and in these expensive prep classes. I think that he brings up a good point that there are a lot of free resources online. I think maybe over the course of high school, I bought one book, but everything else came from the library. I talked to so many other people who were able to go to their local library, check out the book, and do those practice tests, and for me, it wasn't just about learning how to take a test.

I also learned a lot of the material that I actually really needed to succeed in college. I'm hearing from educators who are saying, "My college students don't know how to read, or they don't know basic geometry." For all of the flaws of the SAT and the ACT, they do make sure that you know those basics before you're going into college.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting. Jason, thank you for your call. Call us again. Part of the rep that the SATs get is that they're not so relevant to what you've actually been learning in high school. There's the content of your courses, there is the geometry, there is the reading, but then, the SAT has its own set of questions, which is why people have to do prep outside their coursework. You're saying the opposite.

Emi Nietfeld: Yes. I also think studying for the test gets a bad rep, We tend to say, "Oh, if you're just studying for the test, you're not learning anything." The fact is, in a lot of jobs, you will have to take tests. If you go to college, usually, you have to take exams there. I do worry that there has been such a negative reaction to testing, that young people these days might not be practicing taking tests and feeling confident in their skills in a way that would serve them as they go to college and enter the workforce.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "The SATs got me into MIT. I was 72nd in my high school class, but what opened the eyes of the admission officers were my five 800s on the SATs." There's one story, but you're getting a lot of pushback too. I wonder if you get it when you talk about this topic. Let me take one caller, who I think is going to represent one of the biggest strains of the pushback, and that's Lynn, in Fair Haven. You're on WNYC, with Emi Nietfeld. Hi, Lynn.

Lynn: Oh, hi. Thank you so much. I'm a high school English teacher. I have children in college. I just think it's unrealistic to think that children without access and financial means-- That they can find the same type of quality practice for the SATs as elite people, and people with lots of money in today's world. It takes time. It takes an entire support system to be able to carve out SAT prep. That's all I really had to say.

Brian Lehrer: Let me throw at you for your reaction, something that David Leonhardt, New York Times columnist, wrote in his piece about this. He takes the same position that Emi does, and he says, "Today, perhaps, the strongest argument in favor of the tests is that other parts of the admissions process have even larger racial and economic biases. Affluent students can participate in expensive activities, like music lessons and travel sports teams, that strengthen their applications.

These same students often receive extensive editing on their essays from well-educated parents. Many affluent students attend private schools where counselors polish each student's application. The tests, SATs, are not entirely objective, of course, but consider that other measures of learning show similarly large racial and economic gaps." Where he lands, without reading too many paragraphs from his article, is that this can actually be more objective to a school that is trying to correct for all the cultural and economic biases.

Do you have any thought about that, as a high school teacher?

Lynn: I do. I don't know who wrote the recent op-ed in The New York Times about admissions, but admissions right now, especially into elite colleges, seems to be affirmative action for the most wealthy. I think the issue is larger than whether or not we use the SATs. To go to the extreme, I think we need to rethink how we use further education and college education in this country. I think looking at the SATs is a speck in the larger problem about equity and access to higher education.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Emi, here's another big thread of pushback comments that we're getting on the phones and in texts. I'm going to sum it up as, "Stop talking about the fancy schools. How does this apply to CUNY, SUNY, and other schools where most people attend?"

Emi Nietfeld: I think that's an incredible point, and very, very important. There is way too much emphasis on these elite schools, and I apologize for giving even more. Yes, the Ivy Leagues produce a disproportionate number of leaders, millionaires, and politicians, but 99% of students do not go to an elite college. They go to the CUNYs, the SUNYs, and the Cal States of America. I think that this debate is also very relevant there.

The University of California system does not consider standardized tests at all. I personally think that could be doing a huge disservice to a number of students who are up against the same things that I was up against, or who are really facing down that maybe the SAT is the most fair part of the process for them. I think that public universities should be listening to these debates.

I don't think that the calculus and the decisions that they make will be exactly the same, but I do think that this is relevant there. Certain states, also, are passing laws saying the public universities in this state must require the SAT or the ACT. I think that that's also part of this debate, of-- Are those laws effective? Are they having the right impact? I think that's going to vary based on the school, but this debate shouldn't be restricted just to elite universities.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, as we're almost out of time, from somebody with another point and a different kind of life experience, that left her down, I think, on the standardized test relevance, at least to her college applications. Janine, in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Janine, with apologies, we have a minute left in this segment.

Janine: Okay. Hi. I think the American public school system caters to one kind of student, and the SAT is an extension of that. I'm now in my 30s, and finally finishing my degree, and it's now because the SAT didn't matter. When I take a test, I totally freeze and forget everything I've learned. It's something to try and amend that, but I don't think it's fair to put the pressure.

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] Yes. You have so much company out there, not a good test taker. Emi, last thing, what about those folks?

Emi Nietfeld: I think it's great that there are universities that do not require the SAT or the ACT, and that colleges where you don't have to be a good test taker to thrive, can make that decision to say, "Tests really aren't that important to us. Don't even bother submitting them as a high schooler." I think that's one of the amazing things about living in America, where we have so many different ways that universities can operate.

Brian Lehrer: Emi Nietfeld is best known as the author of the book Acceptance: A Memoir. Her New York Times op-ed is called How the SAT Changed My Life. Thank you so much for sharing your life experience and your argument with us.

Emi Nietfeld: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

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