For the first time, the University of Maryland Baltimore County has tied the University of Maryland College Park in the SAT scores of its freshmen.
A dramatic ACC basketball showdown, it isn't. But UMBC officials have lost little time touting the results as proof that the young Catonsville campus has matured.
"Our campus is one which really highlights the accomplishments of high-achievement students," UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski said. "It's not OK to be an honors student at UMBC. It's great to be an honors student at UMBC."
The Scholastic Assessment Test, administered by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., is the multiple-choice exam that sends high school seniors scrambling for No. 2 pencils and antacid tablets as they apply to college. The minimum mark is 200, and a perfect total for the test is 1,600.
Although the SAT is considered only one of many indications of a student's academic promise -- the high school grade point average is judged the best -- academic officials agree that UMBC's scores reflect its growing stature in the state.
"Clearly, in terms of students -- the top tier of students -- it has come of age, and it is accepted as a school where good students go," said Javier Miyares, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Maryland system. "Generally, it takes a while for students to catch up with reality. Students have caught on to the fact that there is something good going on at UMBC."
UMBC and UMCP tied in average scores of all entering freshmen, which stood at 1,093. Last year, UMCP beat UMBC by three points, then the smallest margin previously registered since records were kept by the university system.
And for the second year in a row, the top 25 percent of UMBC students scored higher than their peers at College Park, besting them in average scores, 1,200 to 1,180.
Founded in 1966, UMBC maintains a student body of 10,000, a level that allows individual programs targeted toward high-scoring Maryland students to affect the campus profoundly. The 139-year-old UMCP, by contrast, has 32,000 students, so a group of top students at UMBC boosts the average more than the same number of top students raise College Park's average.
Officials at UMBC and elsewhere particularly point to the Meyerhoff program, which designates scholarships for top minority students, as a reason the campus' scores have improved steadily over the 15 years the scores have been tabulated.
Scores also have improved at all other campuses over the 15 years officials have been keeping track.
No one is quite sure why, but possible explanations include a reduction in enrollment at College Park, pushing some students to other campuses; tough economic times leading middle-class students to attend lower-cost public colleges; and the increasing popularity of community colleges, leaving a more select population at the four-year schools.
The decision by state officials in the late 1980s to focus UMBC on science and engineering education may have also lifted scores, since students in those disciplines tend to score higher than their peers, campus administrators said.
At historically black Coppin State College in Baltimore, SAT scores have tended to lag behind those of the traditionally white campuses in the state system. But Coppin's scores, too, have risen in the last several years, statistics show.
"That's part of a deliberate attempt to look at a higher concentration of students at the higher end of our mix," said Dr. Sidney Krome, Coppin's vice president for academic affairs. "I'm on the side of those who think the SAT is not an absolutely accurate predictor of what students are going to do. . . . Unfortunately, there are people inside higher education and outside higher education who take SATs very seriously, and sometimes they are people whose views need to be taken into account."
An increase in SAT scores does not necessarily have much to do with the quality of education offered at a campus, Towson State University President Hoke L. Smith said.
"I get concerned if we're going to evaluate schools on the basis of their students' SAT scores. It raises a question about what is the role of American higher education," said Dr. Smith. That question, he said, is how to serve Maryland students who do not register exceptional test scores in high school but who may be able to offer much to society.
"Certainly, these schools are using it as an argument for getting funded and attracting students and for why they are better schools," Dr. Smith said. "If the politicians are only going to judge us on the basis of SAT numbers, then we all have incentive to raise our SATs. But is that good public policy?"