The organization that administers the SATs has announced that going forward students who take the test multiple times will be allowed to send whichever result they choose to colleges, rather than sending all results along as they do now.

The College Board says this new system “allows students to put their best foot forward,” but others are opposed.

To begin with, they say, the “Score Choice program” advantages those students who can afford to take the tests multiple times, allowing them to cherry-pick scores without informing colleges that they are doing so. It also increases the importance of test-prep services to the college admissions process, and enriches the College Board itself by encouraging students to take the test more often.

Further complicating the situation, colleges are not bound to accept the Score Choice program, and some institutions — including Cornell, Penn, Stanford, and USC — have announced that they will continue to require students to submit all their SAT scores as part of their admissions package.

The College Board implemented Score Choice once before, in 1993, but abandoned it in 2002, concluding that it  was unfair to low-income students and students of color. But today, as the New York Times puts it, the organization “sees things differently.”

For those interested in more data on this subject, one blog critical of Score Choice has linked to a 2002 study that found a significant skew in the family income of repeat SAT-takers.