College Board's Release of Incorrectly Low SAT Scores May Spark Lawsuits

The College Board's admission this week that it released incorrectly low SAT test scores for about 4,000 college applicants could spark lawsuits, though colleges and universities contacted yesterday said their admissions decisions would not be affected by the mistake.

A litigation partner at the New York law firm Dreier LLP, Richard Friedman, said possible grounds for lawsuits against the College Board include claims for the negligent infliction of emotional distress.

The question, he said, was whether one could prove that the College Board "negligently caused or substantially contributed to conditions that led to the incorrect scoring." Emotional distress should be "reasonably easy to prove, since the college application process can be emotionally wrenching for both the application and his or her parents," Mr. Friedman added.

The amount of damages a jury may award "would be a function of how sympathetic the claimants were," he said.

Claimants also could sue for compensatory damages, Mr. Friedman said, as some students may have paid to visit or apply to schools they would not have if they thought they could get into a better one. Mr. Friedman added that such claims "could add up pretty darn quickly if many of the students incurred significant costs."

A spokeswoman for the College Board, Chiara Coletti, told The New York Sun yesterday, "If there are lawsuits, we will defend ourself. That's all I can say."

Ms. Coletti said the College Board has asked colleges and universities to re-examine applicants who had incorrect SAT scores.

The College Board on Wednesday admitted the mistake, which affected almost 1% of the 495,000 students who took the test in October, some of whom received scores of more than 200 points less than they deserved. A technical error affected results on all three sections of the test, which has a maximum score of 2,400.

The company that grades the answer sheets, Pearson Educational Measurement, released a statement saying that some answer sheets had an "abnormally high moisture content" that caused their scanners to miss lightly marked ovals. The company has rescored all answer sheets from October through January to make sure the problem was localized. A spokesman, David Hakensen, declined to comment on the possibility of lawsuits.

A spokesman for New York University, Josh Taylor, said the announcement had caused "a scramble a couple of nights ago and earlier today" for the school's admission department, which re-examined every relevant application. He said about 300 of the more than 35,000 students who applied to NYU this year reported incorrect SAT scores. On many applicants' tests, he said, only the multiple-choice questions in the new writing section - which NYU does not consider in its application decisions - were graded incorrectly.

"The mistake only affected a handful of student applications and the admissions office is in the process of putting in the new scores for these students and re-reviewing their applications in order to ensure that these students get a fair review," a spokeswoman for Columbia University, Susan Brown, told the Sun in an e-mail message yesterday.

Most colleges and universities have not yet decided which applicants to accept for next year. However, most schools, including NYU and Columbia, do not allow students whom they rejected for early admission or early decision to reapply that year. Early decisions are usually announced in mid-December.

"The SAT is one of many factors considered in an admissions decision," Ms. Coletti said. "Eighty-three percent of the score differentials were only between 20 and 40 points. The chances that a student was rejected because of his or her SAT scores at that level are small. Classroom grades are more important, and there are many other things that are taken into consideration in an admissions decision." She said some students who received incorrect scores might have retaken the test in November.