Are SATs a Good Thing?
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2024
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year, many selective colleges are reversing Covid-era test-optional admissions policies, requiring applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores again. Emi Nietfeld, author of Acceptance: A Memoir (Penguin Press, 2022), discusses how taking the SAT changed her life and helped her, as a disadvantaged youth, to attend Harvard.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Brian Lett Show on WNYC. |
| 0:13.4 | Good morning again everyone. |
| 0:15.1 | Now the new debate surrounding the SAT exams, |
| 0:19.1 | did they get a bum rap? |
| 0:20.8 | Some colleges that made SAT scores optional as a criterion for admission are now making |
| 0:25.8 | them mandatory again. And there have been two recent articles in the New York Times, one a |
| 0:30.4 | policy piece by columnist David Leinhart and the other a personal essay by the writer |
| 0:35.8 | Emmy Neitfeld arguing that the SATs actually enhance the chances for diverse and disadvantaged and marginalized high school students to get into |
| 0:46.5 | college at all, to get into good colleges, not the other way around as has been previously |
| 0:52.4 | believed. |
| 0:53.1 | We'll talk to Amy Neatfeld and take your calls now. |
| 0:56.0 | Emmy Neatfeld is a freelance journalist best |
| 0:59.0 | known as the author of Acceptance A Mem memoir published in 2022. |
| 1:05.0 | Her New York Times Up Ed is called |
| 1:06.7 | How the SAT Change My Life. |
| 1:09.5 | Amy, thanks so much for coming on. |
| 1:10.8 | Welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for having me, |
| 1:13.7 | having me, Brian. |
| 1:15.2 | Can you start for listeners, not familiar with your work? |
| 1:18.6 | What some of your life was like when you were in high school, |
| 1:21.7 | very difficult circumstances in multiple ways and why you found solace you |
| 1:26.6 | use that word not oppression in studying for the SATs? |
... |
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