The College Board

The College Board is a not-for-profit organization that almost every high schooler across the United States is familiar with. While it is not an association of colleges, it runs a membership association of institutions, which currently includes over 6,000 schools, colleges, universities, and other education organizations.

The organization was founded as the College Entrance Examination Board in 1900 to bring order to the process of college admissions. During the 19th century, the college admissions process was chaotic and inefficient, mostly due to the wide differences in curriculum at public schools across the United States and the lack of universal admissions standards and practices for colleges and universities. At the time of its founding, the College Board had 12 institutional and charter members, which were all located in northeastern United States; this included Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Cornell University.

The College Board aimed to provide a forum for the discussion of issues related to college admissions and access to college and to design and administer a common entrance exam. From 1900 to 1915, it administered tests of knowledge in nine content areas: English, math, history, Latin, Greek, French, German, physics, and chemistry. However, this was changed in 1916 to place a greater emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking while still testing students on subject-area knowledge. The exams were read and scored by college and high-school teachers.

After World War I, inspired by psychological and intelligence tests given to soldiers and sailors, university admissions officials began to explore how they could be used in the admissions process. Carl Brigham, a psychologist at Princeton who had been involved in developing the military tests, was invited to join the College Board in 1924, leading to the creation of the organization’s first psychological examination, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), in 1926. The test had two sections: the first measured verbal or linguistic aptitude, and the second measured mathematical and scientific aptitude. Essays were part of the examinations until 1941 (they were reinstated in 2005). “Achievement” examinations, which were later renamed SAT Subject Tests, were designed to test applicants’ content knowledge and were often administered in test locations after the SAT examination. During World War II, the College Board also designed and supervised examinations for the United States military to test high school seniors’ aptitude and potential to serve as officers, engineers, and other skilled technical positions.

While only 15% of American colleges used the SAT as an admissions tool in 1944, it saw a huge rise in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1955, the College Board established the Advanced Placement (AP) program to enable students to receive advanced placement in colleges. In 1959, the it introduced the Practice SAT exam (PSAT). In 1970, it introduced the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Criticism of the College Board began to appear in the 1960s and 1970s. Many have accused the organization of being a monopoly, and several have questioned whether it has violated its non-profit status (the CEO earned $1.3 million in 2009). The expensive exam fees are also a point of criticism.

Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-College-Board
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board
https://about.collegeboard.org/