One after another at this time of year, elite colleges trumpet the outstanding SAT scores of the applicants they have admitted. The question often raised by such announcements is just how much those scores matter. Two recent studies conclude that they matter quite a lot. This article reports that researchers assert that selective colleges give…

The college admissions process teaches students how to express themselves during interviews, how to describe their best qualities in application essays. It may also make them wary of college marketing campaigns, and skeptical of being treated as a statistics, due to the large role played by standardized-test scores and grade-point averages. Such…