The chancellor of the City University of New York went to City Hall yesterday to defend his administration against assertions that it misrepresented undergraduates’ SAT scores.

Testifying before members of the City Council’s higher education committee at a public hearing, Matthew Goldstein said CUNY has consistently and accurately reported SAT scores of its enrolled students.

“In sum, for many years CUNY has been presenting a balanced picture of itself by reporting information on the SAT scores not only of its admitted but also its enrolled students,” he said.

The council member who is chairman of the committee, Charles Barron of Brooklyn, called the hearing after The New York Sun reported last month that CUNY for years had portrayed the SAT scores of students it accepted as scores of students who ended up enrolling. The Sun also reported that CUNY would not release current or past scores of its enrolled students.

Mr. Goldstein provided data yesterday showing significant increases for both groupings. Average combined SAT scores for students accepted into baccalaureate programs at CUNY senior colleges rose to 1116 this fall from 1001 in the fall of 1997. SAT scores for enrolled freshmen increased to 1040 last fall from 953 in fall 1997. Data for newly enrolled students are not yet available, Mr. Goldstein said. The national average for total SAT scores is 1026, according to the College Board.

The SAT figures do not include baccalaureate students at CUNY’s so-called comprehensive colleges – Medgar Evers, the College of Staten Island, John Jay, and New York City College of Technology – which also serve community college students.

The scores also don’t include students enrolled in the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge program, which allows poorer students who do not meet admissions standards to enroll. Last year, 8,733 senior college and comprehensive college students were enrolled in the SEEK program, about 7.8% of the undergraduate headcount at those colleges.

SAT scores are a sensitive issue for CUNY administrators, who have cited them as evidence of the higher quality of students CUNY has attracted since five years ago, when it put in place higher baccalaureate program entrance standards and stopped offering remedial courses to students at its senior colleges. Critics of CUNY had predicted that those policy changes would shut out poorer-performing students without improving CUNY’s reputation.

The Sun reported that CUNY misrepresented SAT scores of its students in official press releases, in its five-year master plan document, and in a speech given by its board chairman, Benno Schmidt, a former president of Yale University. In those instances, CUNY cited SAT increases without specifying that it was referring to accepted students.

In a December 16 speech titled, “CUNY: Pride of the City,” Mr. Schmidt said researchers had shown that “SAT scores of incoming freshman have increased in CUNY’s senior colleges in the last five years by nearly 200 points,” according to a transcript of the speech. He was referring only to the pool of students CUNY accepted.

Mr. Goldstein said CUNY provides data on enrolled students to the National Center for Education Statistics, to U.S. News & World Report for its annual college guide, and to other college guides.

“Whichever indicator we examine, one conclusion is inescapable,” Mr. Goldstein said. “In just the past few years, CUNY has made remarkable progress in attracting talented students to its senior colleges.”

The CUNY chapter of the National Association of Scholars, a conservative academic group that strongly supported CUNY’s higher admissions standards, released a statement responding to the Sun’s report, saying SAT scores of students enrolling at CUNY “provide a more direct measure of entering student skill levels than scores of the larger group of students admitted but not necessarily enrolled.”

The group also called for an outside evaluation of CUNY’s recent progress, suggesting that the university retain the Rand Corporation to conduct that study. It also said CUNY should list on its Web site more comprehensive data on its students, including scores on postgraduate standardized tests, passing rates for the writing exam that the senior colleges’ students must take before entering their junior year, and graduation rates.