"It's become fashionable to hear the SATs are not useful," McGrath-Lewis said. "[The businesses] assert that the SATs are not a good measure of things they value. We use them for admissions to college."
McGrath-Lewis said the College focuses on finding a student who will be a good academic fit for Harvard.
"We know people can be very successful in the world but are not at this time in their life good academic matches," McGrath-Lewis said.
She said she is reluctant to lose any data available to evaluate a candidate. She also stressed the importance of forming a through picture of a candidate's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the importance of grades accumulated through out high school.
"The solution to imperfect data is more information rather than less," McGrath Lewis said.