Taking the SAT might not be a ton of fun, but let's show a little love for the College Board anyway.
Among all of its services and products, the process of administering over 1 million SAT exams annually has to rank as its most impressive tour-de-force. Each year, with six test sittings, it administers the SAT to over 200,000 students at over 1,000 test centers in over 175 countries.
That's a lot of "over's." Some of those test centers are nearly as big as entire countries.
The College Board is therefore leading the rise in international applications to American universities. Indeed, without the College Board, there would hardly be any international applications to American universities.
That's all well and good, except that this year the College Board's overseas operations seems to be going off the rails.
If you're a student who is already nervous about taking the SAT and you're even more nervous that your local testing centers may sell out, thanks to chronic shortages in many major cities, then you're really not going to be happy when you try to register on the SAT website.
The College Board registration process requires students to submit their name, address, school, and practically every other piece of personal information short of blood type. Once they're done that, aspiring test-takers agree to terms and conditions and, finally, choose a date and a location. Students who try to sign up right now (I just checked) and click the "outside the United States" are met with the following news:
"There are no available registration dates for the current test year. Please check back later to register for future tests."
Say what?
Mind you, the College Board is an organization that specializes, in part, in administering tests of reading comprehension. So let's comprehend this one.
This notice doesn't tell you what the "current test year" is. Is it the calendar year? The '12-'13 school year? Or the '13-'14 school year? When is "later"? What does "available" mean -- that testing sites are full, or that there are no testing sites?
What, exactly, is the attitude of the College Board towards international SAT registrants? Dismissive? Unempathetic? Cold and dispassionate? Unintentionally ironic? Monumentally unhelpful?
I would choose e) all of the above.
I called the College Board to sort out this mess. To my surprise, reached a friendly, forthcoming customer service rep who explained that the College Board is still vetting its overseas testing centers. Reasonably enough, they can't open registration until they're sure of exactly what venues will be available. (For the record, we're looking at "mid-July." It makes you wonder what sort of shady stuff the College Board inspectors are digging up.)
Vetting testing centers is no small matter, given that security is crucial for the test's validity. Just last month a ring of cheaters (organized around hagwon study centers, no less) caused the cancellation of the entire SAT administration in Korea. The College Board doesn't administer the SAT in Mainland China at all.
So, the delay is annoying but the reasons are understandable. What's insulting and remarkably insensitive is the way that the College Board is handling the delay.
I asked the customer service rep if the College Board had issued a press release or other notice explaining this delay. No, she said. Just the brief mention at the end of the registration process and on the generic registration page indicating that "more information...will be available in July."
While students study like crazy—summer being the ideal time to prepare for the SAT—the College Board insults their intelligence. Since we don't know when registration will actually open, and we do know that demand is going to be fierce, I suppose students' best strategy is to start checking after July 10 and hope registration opens sooner rather than later.
I'm confident that most students will, ultimately, get the dates and places they want—and I hope everyone reading this blog will get fantastic scores. Meanwhile, as everyone knows, the SAT gives you 200 points per section just for signing your name. In this case, I think the College Board deserves a zero.
