4,000 Students Received Wrong SAT Scores

March 8, 2006 — -- Lots of students fear bombing the SAT, but this time, the SAT failed them.

Over the next week, about 4,000 high school students will be told they did better on the test than they were originally told -- in some cases by as much as 100 points.

Bea Bradley, a high school senior at the Williams School in New London, Conn., just found out she was among those affected.

Even though there was only 10 points between the incorrect and correct scores, it brought her total up from the 600s to the 700s.

"It was kind of a shock. It scared me to think about what else they could have messed up on. As a kid this is a really big deal and to find out right before you go to school is upsetting."

She hasn't yet heard back from any of the colleges she applied to.

A Nerve-Racking Process Gets Even More Stressful

The College Board, which administers the SAT, says it made a technical error in the scoring process.

It could wind up being an administrative mess for colleges, which are just about to send out their admissions letters.

"Your heart skips several beats because you want everything in this process to be utterly fair," said Bruce Poch, dean of admissions at Pomona College in California. "It means having to redo a lot of work."

Poch is calling students personally to inform them of the problem -- and has already started receiving calls from students who are convinced their SAT scores must have been mistakenly low. Some high school students' applications will be reprocessed "as if they're brand-new files."

Pomona is one of hundreds of colleges across the country that have been notified of SAT errors among its applicants. The College Board is also reaching out to high school guidance counselors and affected students in letters and in e-mail messages. "We're very concerned about the effects this will have on students and making sure with admissions officers that students aren't penalized," said Jennifer Topiel, a spokeswoman for the Board.

Topiel says while scoring mistakes have happened in the past -- a scoring issue with an SAT chemistry test last spring affected a small number of students -- the current problem is the worst of its kind. "This was a confluence of very technical factors that we're still in the process of investigating," she said.

The College Board first learned of a possible problem in late December when two students questioned the scores they had received. The organization reviewed the tests and realized the errors were more widespread.

The problem grew out of the scanning of answer sheets in Texas so that the sheets could be graded by computer. The College Board then rescanned and rescored every exam from the month of October.Topiel emphasized only a small number of students were affected -- 0.125 percent of the nearly 500,000 students who took that particular SAT test in October.

The College Board says it will return registration fees and charges for sending test scores to colleges to the students whose scores were inaccurate.