Elite college admits it exaggerated SAT figures

Claremont McKenna College, a small, prestigious California school, said last week that for the past six years it has submitted false SAT scores to publications like US News & World Report that use the data in widely followed college rankings, write Daniel E Slotnik and Richard Perez-Pena for The New York Times.

President Pamela B Gann said “a senior administrator” had admitted falsifying test scores since 2005. In a message emailed to college staff members and students, Gann wrote that “a senior administrator” had taken sole responsibility for falsifying the scores, admitted doing so since 2005, and resigned his post.

The critical reading and math scores reported to US News and others “were generally inflated by an average of 10 to 20 points each,” Gann wrote. For the class that entered the school in September 2010 – the most recent set of figures made public – the combined median score of 1,400 was reported as 1,410, she said, while the 75th percentile score of 1,480 was reported as 1,510. Such small differences might influence the rankings, and the deception underscores the importance those rankings have taken on, as colleges fret over the loss of even a notch or two against their competitors.
Full report on The New York Times site