Vocaboly.com

[Abe Kohen]

The Perfect Score

By BILLY MCALEER

The SAT, the much-maligned standardized test that over one million high
school students take each year, has reached new pop-culture heights with the
release of the movie The Perfect Score. The film, a Paramount and MTV Films
production released last Friday, chronicles the quest of six high school
seniors who try to steal the exam. Each student believes that the only thing
standing in the way of them winning admission to their desired school is
their sub-par SAT score.

The ringleader of the group, Kyle (Chris Evans) is trying to gain admission
to Cornell's architecture college. He scores below 1100 and believes he must
get a 1430 on the SAT if he has any hope of being admitted and realizing his
dream of being an architect. And he, like the other five, believes the only
way he can improve his score is by breaking into Educational Testing
Services (ETS) in Princeton, N.J. and stealing the answers.

"I've often questioned the ethics of standardized testing, and I feel that
the importance placed on SAT scores has too much of an effect on a kid's
future," explained the film's director, Brian Robbins. "Today's higher
educational environment is very challenging because it's much harder to get
into top colleges. In turn, it becomes more difficult to get into
second-tier colleges as well. All this adds pressure on top of the everyday
challenges kids face just growing up, and we wanted to tap into that."

So how does Cornell fit into this equation? At one point in the film, Kyle
asserts that the architecture college at Cornell is the best of its kind in
the world. Dreaming of becoming an architect since he was in elementary
school, Kyle looks at acceptance to Cornell as his ultimate goal.

Whether or not a few hundred points on the SAT is what really holds Kyle
back is uncertain. "[The SAT] is one of many factors we consider when making
admission decisions. [It is] probably worth mentioning that submitting a
'perfect score' does not guarantee admission to an institution that
practices selective admission," said Jason Locke, director of the
Undergraduate Admissions Office(UAO) in an email.

Elizabeth Cutter, director of admissions at the College of Architecture,
Art, and Planning, refused to comment on admissions practices.

Despite several television advertisements in which the main character dreams
of stealing the SAT in order to get into Cornell, there is little concern
within the University about the film. Though a number of people in the
Cornell News Services had heard of The Perfect Score, all attempts to find
someone who had seen it were unsuccessful.

Some Cornell students, however, have seen the film. "The film was just a
below-average teen movie," said Zed Francis '07. "Everything was just so
far-fetched. I don't think many people's first instinct would be, 'I failed
this test, so let's steal [it].'"

Francis, who saw the film at Ithaca's Pyramid Mall on the day of its
release, remembers "there was much hooting and hollering" every time one of
the characters mentioned Cornell. "It makes Cornell seem like an icon, like
a great place to go," Francis said, "but [there was] a lot of
overexaggeration about how important the SAT is."

There was also some concern at ETS, which was not contacted about the
production of the film, that its release may cause some "copycat" attempts
at theft. The night of the film's release, ETS president Kurt Landgraf met
with consultants to discuss security concerns that may arise as a result of
the film. To date, however, there have been no legitimate threats to the
test's security.

Copyright © 2004 by The Cornell Daily Sun, Inc.
All rights reserved

[rick++]

Too bad I didn't have a branch of the ETS in my high school town
or we could of considered theft too Or know a geek who can
guess a computer password in 30 seconds.

I saw in CA they even ban digital watches from the bar exam.
There are wristwatch pagers these days.

There is an interesting new book I mentioned in another thread
called The Cheating Culture. Stealing a test may have been
less plausible a generation ago. These days there is the perception
a computer wizard can steal practically anything.

The movie seemed interesting from its trailer,
but not very imaginative when I saw it.