For once I'd like to help out the College Board by giving them a handy list of excuses for next time there's a scoring "decorrectness event." (I made that up...) The "humidity" thing is all well and good but you can only use that once. Therefore, here are my humble offerings, which I present to the CB free of copyright. Hey guys, you can store them for the future or use 'em in different sections of the country!
1. Mice. There were mice in the machines and they gnawed the corners of the answer sheets just enough to have them be misread. Also, droppings.
2. Chocoholics at the scanning center. This excuse would probably not be allowed due to ADA, but clearly, chocolate melted on Hershey- craving fingers and then smeared onto test sheets would disrupt the process.
3. The earth's magnetic field. It's well known that the earth's magnetic field shifts every once in a while and can disrupt machinery, even, in theory, destroy life on earth as we know it. Still, there would be tests, wouldn't there?
4. Sunspots. See #3 for the basics, but imagine what one of those suckers could do to an otherwise well-written essay.
5. Lentils. Dry, they look very similar to filled-in ovals on an answer sheet. Damp and they might stick. A rogue vegetarian with poor table manners is all it would take.
6. Butterfly ballots mistaken for test answer sheets. VERY bad mistake. Not only would scores go up and down indiscriminately but the Supreme Court would have to get involved.
7. The butterfly effect.
8. We were reading The DaVinci Code at the time and couldn't put it down. But we managed to insert a secret code that will guarantee you admission to any college you want if you can find the right answer sheet and interpret it correctly! (HINT: The filled-in answers create a portrait of Gaston Caperton)
9. Test takers deliberately moistened their answer sheets with Chanel #5, knowing that its chemical formula and captivating odor would stop any scanner in its tracks. Hugo Boss or CK One works just as well.
10. Stupidity. No wait, cupidity. No, lucidity. Definitely not. Uh, humectants. Hubris. Hootie and the Blowfish, yeah, that's it! No, their last album sucked. Listen, why don't you all just go away and leave us alone for a while and we'll come up with something, OK?
Observations about college admission and its intersections with American culture.
College Access Counseling
My firm, College Access Counseling, Ltd., works with adults and organizations who counsel and support first-generation and minority students on the way to college. I teach the ins and outs of the college process, helping them build social and cultural capital for their students. Click here for more information. I also write for NACAC's blog, Admitted. You can read my entries as well as some of my colleagues', here. Click here to read one of my entries in the New York Times's blog, The Choice.
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- The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
- The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive & Reconnect with Their Fathers
- The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools
- The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
- The Culture of Narcissism
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- The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager
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- The Unintended Consequences of High Stakes Testing
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- What Color Is Your Parachute? for Teens
2 comments:
nicely done.
im glad to see that someone is giving these people some good suggestions!
and dont even get me started on the AP policies! lol
fun stuff...
i'm impressed...
Not only did you manage to take a potshot at the college board (which i'm always in favor of), but you managed to actually come up with some marvelously witty ideas.
actually...if i'm gonna be fed some outrageous excuses, i rather take a hilarious one over some cut and dry (and what they hope possible) excuse.
thanks for the laugh.
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