The College Board and [Checks Notes] TikTok?!?
Today, I’m going to write about a nonprofit taking a far worse tack: lying about what it did and then, when caught, try to make an excuse for it. This morning, Gizmodo reported that the College Board shares SAT scores and grades with Facebook and TikTok. A College Board spokesperson unequivocally denied doing so. So Gizmodo sent a screenshot of the College Board doing just that, to which the spokesperson replied, “’Pixels are simply a means to measure the effectiveness of College Board advertising,” the spokesperson said. “If a student uses the college search tool on CB.org, the student can add a GPA and SAT score range to the search filters. Those values are passed in the pixel, not because we configured the pixel that way but because that’s how the pixel works.’”
Many things about this story confuse me. I’m a very online person, but I have no idea what these “pixels” are. (I mean, I know what pixels are, and I know what Pixels are, but I’m pretty sure this is neither. As the father of teenagers, I’m also a little confused about why they would sell (or give, but it’s definitely selling) data to Facebook. My kids wouldn’t be caught dead on Facebook. Colleges could offer them gigantic scholarships on Facebook and they’d never know. (I get TikTok, otoh: my kids’ thoughts about college are strongly influenced by TikToks of various schools, especially ones where students talk about the food quality at the school.)
On it’s face, though, the idea that the College Board is sharing this kind of information with social media sites, and especially with sites that have their own sordid history with privacy, seems bad. And that feeling that it’s bad is compounded by the fact that the College Board’s spokesperson lied when asked about it. Something more forthright: “Yes, we share the information, but only when students explicitly opt in and then only for X reasons” would have been infinitely better.
(BTW, in case you’re wondering–I certainly was!–the College Board is exempt under section 501(c)(3). It is also tremendously profitable: in 2020, it had almost $780 million of revenue. Of that, less than $9 million came from donations and grants, with more than half of that $9 million made up of government grants. AP exams, on the other hand, provided almost $450 million of revenue, and SAT exams a little over $175 million. With that much program services revenue, and that little in potentially-deductible donations, I’m curious how much work its 501(c)(3) status is doing for it.)
Update 8/30/23: I just learned that I didn’t link to the Gizmodo story; that was an oversight on my part, and I’ve linked to it in the body of the post. If you don’t want to look through, you can also find the story here.
We received an email from a Mr. White, Director of Communications with the College Board. He wrote:
Hello all,
After reviewing the piece The College Board and [Checks Notes] TikTok?!? we demand a correction. The story is factually inaccurate and quite irresponsible. Gizmodo has already updated their story to reflect the corrections.
College Board does not share a student’s SAT score or GPA with Facebook or TikTok. College Board does allow students to search for colleges and filter by admissions SAT score ranges and GPA ranges to return more focused results. These are score ranges that are selected by the user, who may not have even taken an SAT. The filters require a score range to be selected, precisely so a student can’t inadvertently expose a specific score. The filters, which can be viewed via the pixel, are not PII.
Information in the pixel is only available to College Board and the ad platform – no other advertisers can access it.
Please make your corrections immediately. Thank you
Samuel D. Brunson
Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash