SAT Glitch Leaves Anxious Students Waiting
Thousands Unable to Get Results After College Board Web Site Crashes
Hundreds of thousands of students waiting for their SAT results were left in agony today after the Web site for the organization that owns the test crashed because of too much traffic.
Kristin Carnahan, a spokeswoman for the College Board, said that technicians were working on the problem and hoped to get it fixed later today or during the weekend. Failing that, she said, students and colleges would receive the results by regular mail toward the end of the month.
More than a half a million would-be college applicants took the Oct. 9 test, one of the last of the old-style SAT tests before a radical overhaul planned for next spring. Most of the test-takers are high school seniors who have taken the test several times before, but want to improve their scores in order to get into the college of their choice.
The state of California has warned residents that their personal data may have been stolen from computers at the University of California, Berkeley, after a database used by researchers there was compromised by hackers.
The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) issued a media advisory on Tuesday, saying that the agency was working with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate an intrusion on a computer at Berkeley that contained personal information on around 1.4 million recipients and providers of In Home Supportive Services (IHSS), which provides home-care services to low-income elderly and disabled Californians. Names, addresses, telephone and Social Security numbers, as well as the birth dates for IHSS participants, could have been stolen by the malicious hackers, according to Carlos Ramos, assistant secretary at CDSS.