Folks,
Some people may be interested in this piece.
Good night.
OB.
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ARTICLES
Bill Bradley's SAT Scores
When dumb things happen to smart people.
By Geoff Kabaservice
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2000, at 4:30 p.m. PT
The papers of the late Kingman Brewster Jr., who was president
of Yale in the '60s and '70s, include a letter from one E.
Alden Dunham III, a former director of admissions at
Princeton. Dunham argued that Ivy League universities were
overemphasizing the importance of SAT scores. For example,
Dunham wrote, consider a recent Princeton graduate named Bill
Bradley.
"Here is a guy who graduated Magna Cum Laude in history, the
greatest basketball player in the Ivy Colleges, Rhodes
Scholar, probably a governor of Missouri someday—and
all with a 485 verbal SAT!"
Bill Bradley, the thinking presidential candidate, scored a
485 verbal on his SAT? That's lower than George W. Bush, the
allegedly slow-witted presidential candidate. As reported
recently in The New Yorker, Bush got an SAT verbal score of 566.
So what conclusions should we draw? The important conclusions
aren't about whether Bradley is really smart or Bush is
really dumb. They're about ways in which these two are
actually similar. Above all, both of them are beneficiaries
of affirmative action. A 566 verbal would not have gotten you
into the Yale Class of 1968, especially with mediocre
prep-school grades, if you weren't also the son—and
grandson, for good measure—of a Yale alumnus. Likewise
a 485 verbal wouldn't get you into the Princeton Class of
1965, if you weren't also a star basketball player.
By the time Bradley applied to college in the early '60s,
selective schools such as Princeton and Yale viewed
themselves as intellectual training grounds, not the clubby
enclaves of previous times. In this new era, a score below
500 on either the verbal or math section of the SAT normally
meant rejection. A 1960 New Yorker article described the case
of an African-American applicant to Yale who was
valedictorian and president of his high-school class and a
stellar athlete to boot. His application was
rejected—because his 488 SAT average "would certainly
be the lowest in the entire Yale class." But the cutoff point
was more flexible for top athletes, for alumni "legacies,"
and starting in the late '60s, for blacks and other minorities.
This leads to the following non-multiple-choice question for
Bradley and Bush: If you got into an Ivy League college for
reasons other than "qualifications"—narrowly defined as
grades and test scores—what is so terrible about
bending the same rules on behalf of African-Americans?
Bradley would probably have an easier time with this question
than Bush, because as a Democrat he is not required to
believe that "reverse discrimination" is necessarily a
terrible thing, and because athletic talent can plausibly be
seen as a legitimate aspect of "merit," while choosing a
father who went to Yale cannot. But both examples undercut
the argument against affirmative action.
The examples of Bradley and Bush also illustrate the fallacy
of taking the SAT as a measure of intelligence or much of
anything else—let alone of qualification to be
president of the United States. This is not because Bradley
scored worse than Bush, but because both have led successful
lives and are patently better qualified for the presidency
than many citizens with higher scores.
Of course, any analysis of individual SAT results must be
taken with a grain of salt. Bradley and Bush sat for the test
in the days before score-raising courses like Kaplan and
Princeton Review. The SAT has been "recentered" in recent
years, boosting overall scores by up to a hundred points.
Bradley, knowing he would be offered athletic scholarships at
dozens of non-Ivy schools, may not have taken the test
seriously. And in any case, Bush and Bradley actually scored
quite respectably when considered apart from the lofty
standards of Ivy Leaguers. Both were probably in the top
third of all test-takers and would have been in the top
quarter (at least) if the SAT had been administered to all
high-school seniors.
All the SAT even purports to measure is likely first-year
college grades. Indeed, the test admirably predicted the
freshman year academic difficulties of both Bradley and Bush.
While Bush remained mired in a "Gentleman's C" groove for the
duration of his undergraduate years, Bradley was able to pull
himself out of his first-year struggles by dint of hard
effort and went on to an honors degree and a Rhodes scholarship.
Judging from their undergraduate careers alone, you might well
argue that the examples of Bill Bradley and George W. Bush
illustrate a subtler point about affirmative action than mere
thumbs-up or thumbs-down. That is, affirmative action is more
likely to succeed when it takes into account personal
qualities like drive and motivation, which may not be
captured on the SAT. Affirmative action is likely to fail
when it is merely a special preference bestowed upon those
who have the right parents, whether "right" means educational
pedigree or skin color.
Even four decades later, Bradley's appeal as a presidential
candidate—contrary to some of his own campaign
slogans—is not that he was ever the epitome of
effortless cerebral and athletic superiority but that he has
made the most of his talents. No test, whether it takes the
form of the SAT or a pop quiz on foreign affairs, is
conclusive proof of a person's potential. Scores alone cannot
be the sole basis for making decisions about college
admissions, hiring decisions, or presidential elections.
Affirmative action (even for athletes and preppies) sometimes
has a place in this land of second chances, where anyone can
grow up to be president. Bill Bradley and George W. Bush
ought to know.
RELATED ON THE WEB
In a proposed TV ad [http://www.gwbush.com/ad1.htm] at the
gwbush.com parody site, a mom informs her son that he can't
get into Yale with C's. "But mom," the boy retorts, "they
took him" (pointing at George W. Bush picture). For $3 you
can buy [http://gwbush.bigstep.com/item.html?CIID=1939038] a
bumper sticker proclaiming, "Don't blame Dubya ... He's a
victim of Social Promotion." To get SAT tips from the
Princeton Review, click here
[http://www.review.com/college/templates/temp2.cfm?topic=Test&body=SAT/3tips.cfm&Link=SAT.cfm&special=College.cfm].
Here's an aptitude test Bradley might have done better
on—the Liberal Aptitude Test [http://members.aol.com/daveander/index.htm].
To buy or read about Michael Dunlop Young's utopic/dystopic
novel, The Rise of the Meritocracy, click here
[http://bn.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=&ISBN=1560007044].
To read a Slate "Book Club" dialogue on The Big
Test--Nicholas Lemann's history of the SAT and the
meritocratic culture it spawned--click here
[http://slate.msn.com/code/BookClub/BookClub.asp?Show=9/27/99&idMessage=3687&idBio=118].
(Buy the book here [http://bn.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=&ISBN=0374299846].)
RELATED IN SLATE
Last year Bruce Gottlieb deconstructed
[http://slate.msn.com/HeyWait/99-12-09/HeyWait.asp] a
preferential-admissions plan that might have helped Bradley.
In 1996, Herbert Stein moderated a panel discussion
[http://slate.msn.com/CoC/96-10-07/CoC.asp] on affirmative
action and its relation to SAT scores.
----------------------------------------------------------------
TODAY IN SLATE
Why Bill Bradley Didn't Get Into Yale
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/bradley/bradley.asp]
The Big Snow of '00
[http://slate.msn.com/Code/chatterbox/chatterbox.asp?Show=1/26/00&idMessage=4475]
Do Jews Marry for Evolution?
[http://slate.msn.com/Code/Culturebox/Culturebox.asp?Show=1/25/00&idMessage=4469]
When Your Boss Is Michael Jordan
[http://slate.msn.com/code/breakfast/breakfast.asp?Show=1/26/00&idMessage=4473&idBio=140]
[]
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culture. Read Slate at http://www.slate.com.
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