Congress leader Rahul Gandhi sparked controversy when he drew parallels between India’s IIT-JEE entrance exams and the American SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test), proposing that Dalits should prepare the IIT entrance exam papers to increase opportunities for underprivileged students to get admissions into these institutions.
In a viral video circulating on social media, Gandhi recounted an anecdote to a gathering, stating that “whites failed the SAT exam when black people began preparing the question papers”.
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He continued by narrating a story about an experiment. “Who decides what’s merit? Let me share a story. In America, they have SAT exams like we have IITs. When SATs started, something strange happened. White students were doing well, but Black or Spanish-speaking students were not.”
“Merit depends on who controls the system,” Rahul could be seen saying in the video.
A Congress worker stated that the video was recorded during the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra. The viral clip is part of an eight-minute video posted on Rahul Gandhi’s official YouTube channel on May 4. In the video, Gandhi was responding to a query from a local regarding reservations and the Congress party’s advocacy for a caste census.
Rahul Gandhi referred to the SAT exams, formally known as the Scholastic Assessment Test. These tests are standardised assessments commonly taken by American high school students.SAT consists of 98 questions divided into four sections: one for reading, one for writing, and two for mathematics.
Initially developed in 1926 by Carl Brigham, a professor at Princeton University, the SAT was historically a requirement for college admissions in the US. However, in recent times, many American universities have reconsidered the significance of SAT scores, especially in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, with some institutions choosing to minimize or even abandon their reliance on SAT results for evaluating students.