Students in the MSU Department of Psychology are developing a personality-based addition to the SAT to more accurately match incoming students with colleges.
The College Success Project, now in its third year, is funded with about $300,000 from the College Board, the distributors of the SAT.
Psychology Professor Neal Schmitt, who leads the project with nine other student researchers, said the two-section multiple choice test aims to boil down a student's personality into a numerical score.
The first section, a biographical data test, asks students about high school experiences, including extra-curricular activities, sports, clubs and leadership roles held by students.
The second section is a situational judgment test, which gives students hypothetical situations and allows them to choose a course of action.
Psychology graduate student Alyssa Friede said the test also will help gauge how well a student might perform in college.
"Some people feel the SAT and ACT don't give a sense of who they are," Friede said. "This gives people a better representation of a person."
In the first year of research, the group spent time finding the information national colleges hope to find out about students. The group discovered 12 criteria universities had in common, including physical and mental health, social responsibility, leadership, interpersonal skills and artistic appreciation.
The group developed a pilot test for incoming freshmen to take during college orientation. The College Success Project offered $40 to students who took the test, and the project was allowed access to high school grade reports and ACT and SAT scores, Schmitt said.
Psychology graduate student and group member Smriti Shivpuri said in the past two years, the group worked to perfect pitfalls in the test, such as the ability for the test taker to lie and to make a test for all kinds of people.
"We want the test to have no difference between groups and produce equally well for all groups," Shivpuri said.
The research group has used trick questions as a technique to gauge truthfulness, psychology graduate student and group member Lauren Ramsay said. For example, the test might ask students if they have used a computer programming language that doesn't exist, she said.
Ramsay said the group tailored the exam with more specific questions about the students' accomplishments.
The group said they will try to begin collecting data from high school students. Schmitt said the group is working out partnerships with 10-15 schools in the nation to receive access to academic records.
He said the test was at least two years away from being implemented, and it would be up to the College Board to decided how the test is marketed.
Students interested in being tested must be incoming freshmen in their first semester. Both sections in the test are now offered separately, Schmitt said, and each takes about two hours and pays students $20.
For more information, visit http://www.io.psy.msu.edu/cbstudy.
