Making Life Harder for Home Schooled Students
24th November 2021
The College Board, the organization that runs the SAT exams, has announced that they will no longer be giving SAT subject exams. That will be a problem for home schooled students who want a way of convincing colleges to admit them, especially for ones who hope to be accepted by an elite school. Home schooled students don’t have high school grades or teachers’ recommendations; unless they have some extraordinary accomplishment to show, publishing a novel or winning a national chess championship, they largely depend on objective tests to convince schools to accept them.
The replacement suggested by the College Board in its explanation of the change is the AP exam. Home schooled students take AP exams by finding a local school willing to let them do so. Assuming they can do so, there is still a problem. The AP exam, with a score range of of 1-5, is not nearly as good a way for student to prove his ability as an SAT exam with a score range of 200-800. One percent of students got an 800 on the Literature SAT, 9.3% a 5 on the English language and literature AP. 3% got an 800 on the American History SAT, 13% a 5 on the United States History AP. An 800 on either exam is much stronger evidence of a student’s knowledge than a 5 on the corresponding AP exam.