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 excessive weight to SAT scores for the sake of bolstering their college-guide rankings and, in doing so, greatly complicate their pursuit of diversity. They argue that selective colleges do not necessarily have to consider applicants' ethnicity and race to promote diversity. Rather, colleges could increase their enrollments of minority and low-income students simply by giving more weight to admissions criteria other than standardized-test scores. At the same time, however, the studies suggest that powerful market forces have selective colleges under pressure to give even more weight to standardized admissions tests, hurting the prospects of low-income and minority applicants who are less likely to post high scores.