Student Loan Blog : ACT

College Board Settles Inquiry into Its Student Loan Practices

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:40:00 GMT

The College Board, which administers the SAT, ACT, and AP college admissions tests, has agreed to resolve an investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal into its student loan practices.

As part of the settlement agreement, the College Board — which exited the student loan business last year — will allocate $675,000 to developing a set of tools, including calculators, that would help families and financial aid administrators across the country to compare student loan offers (“College Board Rapped for Student Loan Marketing,” North County Gazette, Dec. 8, 2008).

The tools will “help parents, students and educators with the college loan process” by identifying the lowest cost student loan options, said Jennifer Topiel, a spokeswoman for the College Board, in an emailed statement.

“Our investigation of the student lending industry revealed arrangements — concealed from students and families — between the College Board and financial-aid offices at several schools,” Blumenthal said in a statement December 8. “The College Board provided discounted equipment and services to the schools in exchange for a coveted spot on the schools’ preferred-lender lists.”

Cuomo characterized the College Board’s loan arrangement with colleges as deceitful, although he did say that the testing company, with “its national reach and extensive expertise in higher education,” was well-suited to help parents and students “borrow smartly” (“College Board Resolves Two State Student-Loan Probes,” Bloomberg.com, Dec. 8, 2008).

“Loans are hard enough to come by these days; the last thing we need are deceitful arrangements like this one that stand squarely in the way of students and parents getting the facts,” Cuomo said. “We should be doing absolutely everything we can to guide students to the least expensive, least complicated option for affording higher education.”

Code of Conduct Seeks to Protect Students

Should the College Board ever resume its college lending programs, it has said it will abide by the Attorney General’s Direct-to-Consumer Marketing Code of Conduct, which prohibits lenders and marketers of student loans from using deceptive marketing practices.

The code of conduct is the result of Cuomo’s investigations into the student loan industry that have uncovered widespread conflict of interest practices among colleges and student loan lenders. Colleges and financial aid officers received both payments and perks from lenders in exchange for placement on schools’ preferred lender lists.

Cuomo spokeswoman Emily Browne said that 22 lenders and 26 institutions have pledged to sever financial ties and abide by a code of conduct that prohibits accepting gifts or payments from lenders.

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Number of Students Taking ACT Goes Up, Scores Go Down

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:08:00 GMT

Although the number of high school students taking the ACT this year increased by 9 percent compared to last year, students’ average scores on the college entrance exam dipped slightly, according to a recent report released by the testing agency.

This year, students averaged a score of 21.1 on the ACT out of a possible score of 36, down from 21.2 last year. This year’s test scores show that more than three in four test-takers will likely need remedial help in at least one subject area in order to be successful in college.

The fact, however, that scores held somewhat steady this year even as more students took the exam, means that more students are earning scores indicative of college readiness.

“More students are reaching at least a minimum level of readiness for college-credit courses,” says Cyndie Schmeiser, president and COO of the ACT Education Division. (“ACT Scores Down, But More Students College-Ready,” The Associated Press, Aug. 13, 2008)

Overall, 22 percent of the 1.42 million high school students who took the test this year received scores indicating that they were “ready for college,” determined by whether these students are “likely to earn a ‘C’ or higher” in their first-year courses of math, science, English, and reading.

“We’re keeping a lot of kids from having to take remedial level courses,” Schmeiser adds. “That translates to millions of dollars that are being saved at the state level.”

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Concerned About College Costs, Texas Board Considers Changes to State Financial Aid

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:13:00 GMT

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is considering restructuring the state’s financial aid programs amid growing concerns about college affordability.

Proposed changes would raise the academic standards students must meet to qualify for the Texas Grant program, which helps low-income students pay for college, and would merge two of the state’s lesser-known financial aid programs with the Texas Grant. The board would also consider raising the income level at which students qualify for the Texas Grant, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle (“Financial Aid Fix Raises Concerns About Poorer Students,” July 21, 2008).

The Texas Grant program currently serves students who come from families that earn $39,000 a year or less and who have completed the recommended high school curriculum for Texas students, which includes four years of English, math, and science.

Changes Could Negatively Impact Low-Income Students

Some legislators are concerned that if enacted, the proposed changes would benefit middle-income students and widen the financial aid gap for low-income students. They also say raising the academic criteria for students who hope to qualify for a Texas Grant — requiring students to earn a 1350 on the SAT or an 18 on the ACT — would be detrimental to the most financially needy students who the grant program is designed to help.

“The changes will effectively cut off many of these students,” said Max Castillo, president of the University of Houston’s downtown campus.

Even under the current criteria, only about half of the students who qualify for the Texas Grant program receive a grant because there isn’t enough money, says state Senator Rodney Ellis, one of the original sponsors of the Texas Grant. Texas ranks last in per-capita spending for college grants among the 10 most populous states, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs.

If approved by the education board, the new merit criteria would apply for students entering high school in fall 2009.

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Students Who Cheat on ACT, SAT Exams Face Few Consequences

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:31:00 GMT

Students at a Los Angeles area high school are suspected of paying a former student to take the ACT college entrance exam in their place.

The alleged cheaters will likely have their scores invalidated, but the colleges and universities that received the students’ scores may never know why, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times (“Cheating on ACT, SAT College Entrance Exams Has Few Consequences,” July 14, 2008).

While students who are caught cheating in college may face probation or be expelled, students who cheat on one a college entrance exam get a second shot at a higher score. And neither the college nor the student’s high school are alerted about the student’s dishonest behavior.

“We don’t tell schools or anyone else; we simply cancel the score,” said ACT spokesman Ed Colby. “What we’re trying to do is make sure the scores that we send to colleges are valid. It’s not our intention to go around punishing students who make mistakes or who’ve done something they shouldn’t have.”

Cheating Policies Don’t Encourage Ethical Conduct

Critics contend that the ACT’s policy to keep testing irregularities confidential — a policy that is also held by the SAT — sends a message that cheating on the test is OK and has few consequences.

“What they’re basically saying is ‘Try it. You have nothing to lose,’ ” said Michael Josephson, president of the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics. “Why not say to someone who robbed a 7-Eleven, ‘Please give back the merchandise or pay for it, but we don’t want you to feel bad about stealing.’ ”

Josephson argues that the ACT and the SAT cheating policies are too lax and firmer consequences need to be put in place.

Tom Ewing, spokesman for the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, said that prohibiting a student suspected of cheating from re-taking the test could hinder that student’s educational future — a move he said “seems a bit extreme.”

The two companies have found that cheating on the tests is relatively rare and prompts only about 2,000 investigations on average out of the more than 3 million tests administered each year. Most accusations of cheating are made by students or exam proctors and typically involve a student copying from another’s exam.

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New Certificate May Boost Credentials of Community College, Trade-School Graduates

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:49:00 GMT

Students attending community colleges, trade, or professional schools may soon be required to pass yet another exam and receive additional credentials, the Career Readiness Certificate, before landing a job, according to an article in Inside Higher Education (“The New Exit Exam ... for Jobs,” July 9, 2008).

Introduced in 2004 by the state of Virginia, the Career Readiness Certificate is now being used or is in the process of being incorporated into programs as a qualifying tool in as many as 30 states for jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree.

The CRC-certificate model is based on a three-test product developed by ACT that measures an individual’s ability to read and locate information, and gauges applied mathematics skills. Test-takers can achieve bronze, silver, or gold certificates based on their performance to show how “trainable” an employee may be for any job.

Considering the state of the U.S. economy and the reality of globalization, the CRC is “an idea whose time has come,” according to Barbara Bolin, president of the National Association for Career Credentialing.

“Over the last 10 to 15 years there has been a weakening confidence in the academic credentials with which people graduate from high school and college,” Bolin said. “The CRC is the perfect complement to those credentials.”

Many two-year schools are beginning to require that students obtain the certificate either to qualify for admittance into various programs of study, or to receive a certificate of completion from certain programs.

For example, at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College in South Carolina, students in fields that do not have a national certification program must complete the Career Readiness Certificate test.

Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, in North Carolina, has lowered the attrition rate in its pharmacy technician program to zero after requiring a certain level of achievement on the Career Readiness Certificate for entrance into the program. And at Piedmont Community College, also in North Carolina, upper-level nursing assistant students are being given the Career Readiness Certificate to boost their credentials.

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New SAT Policy Gives Students Control Over What Scores Colleges See

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:32:00 GMT

A new SAT scoring policy will give high school students the option to show only their best SAT score to college admissions officers and to prevent these school officials from seeing test-scores that were less-than-stellar.

Under the new policy, which goes into effect next year, students can take the widely used college entrance exam multiple times and send only the scores they want admissions officers to see, unlike the current policy in which colleges receive scores every time a student attempted the SAT.

The score-reporting change recently announced by the College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers the test, comes at a time when universities are placing less emphasis on standardized testing in choosing prospective freshmen and when the rival ACT exam is gaining popularity, according to the LA Times (“SAT Will Let Students Pick Which Scores to Show Colleges,” June 21, 2008). The new SAT scoring option emulates the ACT’s long-standing score-choice policy.

“It’s clearly a marketing move to try to fend off the growing perception that the ACT is a more consumer-friendly product,” says Robert Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, an organization that monitors standardized tests for signs of bias (“Kids Can Pick Which SAT Scores a College Sees,” U.S. News World Report, June 24, 2008).

Changes Giving Affluent Students a Boost, Critics Say

Some high school counselors and college admissions officials have raised concerns that the SAT score-reporting change will give students who can afford to retake the $45-test multiple times an edge, writes U.S. News reporter Lucia Graves. But College Board officials say the criticisms are unfounded, contending that “there’s no advantage to taking the SAT more than twice, and our fee waivers let low-income students take the test [free] twice.”

The SAT’s score-reporting change is the latest shake-up to the standardized test that has been a college admission staple for decades. Just last week, the College Board announced that despite dramatic changes to the SAT that were designed to help colleges and universities better predict a student’s academic performance in college, the adjustments did not improve the overall reliability of the test.

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Top-Rated Colleges Drop SAT Requirement for Admissions Applicants

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:27:00 GMT

Smith College in Massachusetts and Wake Forest University in North Carolina recently joined the nearly 30 percent of all 760 four-year colleges and universities in the country that no longer require the submission of SAT or other standardized test scores as a condition for admission, according to an article on CNN.com (“More Colleges Move Toward Optional SATs,” May 30, 2008).

Although many other institutions have previously gone SAT and ACT-optional, Smith and Wake Forest are the first top-30 schools on U.S. News & World Report’s Top Liberal Arts Colleges list and Top National Universities list, respectively, to drop the requirement. Smith College ranked 17^th on 2008’s top liberal arts colleges list and Wake Forest came in 30^th out of the nation’s top universities.

"We in admissions have put up a barrier to these students to say all of your hard work and all of your academic achievement is being negated by one test, and we don't feel like that is fair," said Martha Allman, Wake Forest’s director of admissions, in the Chicago Tribune (“University to Drop Required ACT, SAT,” May 27, 2008).

Under the new policy, Wake Forest will still allow applicants to submit SAT and ACT scores if they choose, but will start placing more emphasis on personal interviews, academics, and extracurricular activities.

College consultant Jack Maguire, founder of Maguire Associates, believes that schools which become test-optional, like Wake Forest, focus their admissions decisions on what’s really important.

"I do think it improves a school's image," he said. "It shows… they're really interested in increasing diversity."

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