College Board Is Selling Student Data to Selective Colleges

As a reward for his devotion to corporate power during the creation of Common Core, David Coleman was handed the plum job as CEO for the College Board, where his work to shape college applicants in the image desired by Bill Gates could continue, unimpeded.  

Now Coleman's greed has joined forces with the greed of America's richest universities and colleges to misuse student SAT data to enrich all participating parties. For just 47 cents each (payable to the College Board), colleges and universities can buy SAT records of Ivy League aspirants and invite them to apply, whether or not the students ever had a chance in hell to get in.

More applicants to say no to makes selective colleges look even more selective, thus raising the prominence of their brand, and it gives the College Board a half-buck per head, plus all the extra dough that rolls in from kids retaking the SAT when they find out that, oh, Columbia is interested in me??  

Diabolical? You bet. The Wall Street Journal has the story:

Jori Johnson took the practice SAT test as a high-school student outside Chicago. Brochures later arrived from Vanderbilt, Stanford, Northwestern and the University of Chicago.

The universities’ solicitations piqued her interest, and she eventually applied. A few months later, she was rejected by those and three other schools that had sought her application, she said. The high-school valedictorian’s test scores, while strong by most standards, were well below those of most students admitted to the several schools that had contacted her.

“A lot of the rejections came on the same day,” said Ms. Johnson, a 21-year-old senior film major at New York University, one of three schools that accepted her out of 10 applications. “I just stared at my computer and cried.”

The recruitment pitches didn’t help Ms. Johnson, but they did benefit the universities that sent them. Colleges rise in national rankings and reputation when they show data suggesting they are more selective. They can do that by rejecting more applicants, whether or not those candidates ever stood a chance. Some applicants, in effect, become unknowing pawns.

Feeding this dynamic is the College Board, the New York nonprofit that owns the SAT, a test designed to level the college-admissions playing field.

The board is using the SAT as the foundation for another business: selling test-takers’ names and personal information to universities. . . .