College admissions officers in Massachusetts and elsewhere yesterday scrambled to deal with the applications of thousands of students whose SAT scores were too low because of a technical glitch, one of the biggest mistakes ever made on the high-stakes exam.

Ooops! Someone messed up. Ostensibly, a computer, but really there’s a human behind it in the end. This was covered by the NYT yesterday, but now the Boston Globe has some interesting notes about how it affects Massachusetts colleges.

Officials at The College Board, which administers the test, said technical glitches led to errors in roughly 4,000 students’ October 2005 tests, resulting in some students not getting credit for some of their correct answers. …

The College Board said that 83 percent of the incorrect scores were too low by 40 points or less. Five percent involved 100 points or more, and 16 students’ scores were more than 200 points off on the 2,400-point exam.

Sucks to be one of those ~4,000 people, I suppose.