Should the SAT remain timed? Some say the College Board should allow students as much time as they need to take the SAT. Others say more time wouldn't help.

• Author: Young, John
• Position: Opinion

YES Earlier this year, the College Board announced that it would not flag the SAT scores' of students who take the test under special conditions that allow for extra testing time. Students who have been diagnosed as having one of several types of disabilities can qualify for the extra time. However, for the majority of students, extra time on the SAT will generally not lead to higher scores and may make the scores less useful in college admissions.

If there were no time limit for the SAT, then local conditions across the country would dictate how long students have for the test. In one school, students might be able to spend more time than in another, because of what facilities or proctors are available. It would be unfair for some students to have more time than others.

Most assignments and tests in college--indeed, most activities in life that matter--have time limits. And that's not a bad thing. Although the SAT has a time limit, it is expected that most students can finish the entire test. It is not intended to be a measure of a student's speed in answering questions. Similarly, most college courses are set up so that students can complete all of the required work in a certain time frame, usually in a semester.

Although the idea of unlimited time is appealing, it is unlikely that this would help most students. In fact, spending too much time obsessing over the answer to one question could actually be detrimental. Past research has shown that test takers with time to check their work are more likely to change a correct answer to a wrong answer than the other way around. Besides, for students without disabilities (the majority of test takers), studies have found that on many tests, having extra time does not markedly improve scores.

Until we find evidence that having a timed version of the SAT is detrimental to the performance of most examinees--or that an untimed version would help most students--we should continue to administer the SAT with a time limit.

--JOHN YOUNG Associate Professor of Educational Psychology Rutgers University NO The College Board's decision not to tell colleges and Universities which students, because of a disability, have been given extra time to complete the SAT is the right choice...