The nation’s average SAT scores dropped significantly in 2011 from last year, according to results released Wednesday by the College Board, but experts offered different perspectives on the reasons why and the remedies, as well as whether the dip signifies something good or bad.
The total mean SAT scores in reading, math and writing this year were 497, 514 and 489, respectively, down from 500, 515 and 489, respectively, from the year before, according to the 2011 College-Bound Seniors Total Group Profile Report released by the College Board.
If you ask Jim L. Miller, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC, such decreases from year to year don’t really mean much unless it’s part of a multi-year trend. And even then, he said, it likely stems from the fact that more members of socio-economic groups that are underrepresented on the nation’s campuses are now taking the SAT.
“I would suspect that, as you have higher degrees of participation, your scores are going to moderate a little bit,” Miller said.
“The best prepared are already thinking in advance about going to college,” Miller continued. “The next people as you expand the pools are going to be people that have not had as much preparation.”
Miller said he was pleased to see that more students are taking the SAT “because it seems to me that there are more people thinking about degrees.”
Indeed, as in previous years, the College Board noted that the nearly 1.65 million students who took the SAT in 2011 represented the “largest and most diverse class in history.”
