Anthrax delays SAT results

Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2001 | 10:37 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Eighty-five Palo Verde High School students are wondering what became of their College Board exams in the wake of the anthrax scare that shut down the New Jersey post offices, where their answer sheets were apparently held up.

The local students, who took the SAT tests on Oct. 13, are in the same boat as thousands of other students from 89 schools nationwide, including three others in Nevada, whose unscored exams have been delayed.

The College Board says it is contacting high school students and offering them the choice of retaking the test or receiving a refund for the $25 exam.

"The school has been notified, but it is up to the College Board to notify the 85 Palo Verde students," Clark County School District spokeswoman Mary Stanley Larsen said today.

"The students will be given the opportunity to retake the test on Dec. 1 which will give them sufficient time for submitting college applications to the more competitive schools."

The other Nevada high schools affected by the SAT mail delays are Laughlin High, Eureka County High in Eureka and White Pine High in Ely.

The College Board, a New York-based higher education membership organization, owns the test, which is given seven times during the school year. Scoring of the college entrance tests is conducted by the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J.

The College Board estimates mail delays held up the answer sheets of as many as 7,800 students out of about 550,000 who took the test last month. That figure was based on the fact that ETS got none, or only some, of the answer sheets from high schools and other test centers in this country and overseas.

More than 2 million students take the SAT each year, about half of them seniors. This is the height of the application season.

Students may retake the test at no charge at the Dec. 1 sitting, College Board spokesman John Hamill said Tuesday. But the College Board also plans several makeup tests, which will likely be scheduled for later in December.

When students sign up for the test, they may ask the College Board to provide their scores free to up to four schools. The colleges and universities will be contacted and asked to be flexible in dealing with the students' applications, Hamill said.

If the delayed answer sheets eventually arrive, but students who have retaken the exam will have the choice of sending colleges the higher of the two scores, he said.

Sun reporter Ed Koch and the Associated Press contributed to this report.