Every year Harvard admits candidates whose SAT scores are “flagged,” McGrath Lewis said. She said she did not have exact numbers for such admitted students, but said that the College received “several hundred” applications with flagged scores each year.
“We’re used to admitting candidates even with the asterisk,” she said. “We don’t discriminate. It’s illegal and it’s not in Harvard’s interest.”
“If someone has a disability that can be accommodated here, we want to make sure we don’t discount their ability,” she said.
Many College applicants who have taken the SAT under special conditions also have taken it under standard conditions, McGrath Lewis said. She said that students will take the SAT with special conditions so they “might represent their talents better.” But she said that “very often” applicants will receive the same score on standard and special versions of the SAT.
When information about an applicant’s disability is available, it is “much more likely to come from students or their family” than from any other source, McGrath Lewis said.
Those who opposed the change away from flagged score reports argued that without flags, many more students without genuine disabilities would push to take the test under non-standard conditions.
“It may produce many more people who have taken this test with non-standard conditions, but I’m not concerned about it,” McGrath Lewis said.
“I had always thought that it was a disadvantage to have extra time,” said Chris C. Campell, an SSP student. “To pool scores of students with extra time indiscriminately with those of students who took the test under timed conditions is not right.”
Despite the recent criticism and planned changes to the SAT, McGrath Lewis said that a standardized test that nearly all applicants take is an important part of an application because it provides a standard measure to compare different candidates.
“We are happy to use any test,” she said. “We like an objective test that tests a large number of candidates.”
Critics of standardized testing said that even with the content changes, the SAT is only useful as a small part of assessing applicants.
“There’s a lot of research on the predictability of the SAT on freshman year performance, and it’s moderate at best,” Horn said.
But McGrath Lewis stressed that that the SAT I and other standardized tests are not as central a factor in the Harvard admissions process as some applicants might believe.
“I don’t think there ever was a case in which tests were a determining factor,” she said. “And I’ve been doing this for 15 years.”
—Staff writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.