With the SAT approaching this Saturday, I have been thinking a lot lately about standardized tests and their importance in college admissions these days. Standardized tests are counting less and less for college admissions lately, and I think that's a good thing. In fact, I firmly believe that colleges should make submission of standardized test scores completely optional for all applicants.
While I understand the premise behind so called "standardized" tests, I think that they fall quite short of their supposed goal of showing scholastic achievement or aptitude. Rather than testing actual knowledge or intelligence, they (the SAT particularly) instead test a candidate's ability to fill in a multiple choice answer sheet under time pressure and churn out an essay in 25 minutes. However, many times very intelligent students who earn good grades in school don't do well on standardized tests, and vice versa.
An example of this was last June's Chemistry SAT. My best friend Amalia and I took the test together. I had received an A in my chemistry course that year; she had received an A-. We had spent a comparable amount of time studying and both had a fairly firm grasp of the material being tested. Clearly we had a similar knowledge of chemistry and one would expect that we would perform similarly on the SAT.
Not so. When I received my score a month later, I was delighted to see that I had gotten a 790 on the test. I called Amalia to see how she did and was shocked to hear that she had gotten a 460.
Maybe I had gotten a better night's sleep the night before. Maybe I had had a better breakfast or Amalia had just had an off day. Still, a truly standardized test would have reflected such deviations from the norm only minorly, instead of showing a 330 point difference.
Amalia's and my experience on the Chemistry SAT were not isolated incidents, either. I've spoken to a lot of my friends about their opinion of the SAT and ACT and the overwhelming opinion among the high schoolers and college students I've come in contact with is that they are not at all indicative of high school or college success. While I can understand that colleges want something other than GPA, which varies widely from school to school, to evaluate applicants, I think that GPA coupled with recommendations and essays ought to provide colleges with enough information to determine whether candidates are a good match for their school. Furthermore, I think that the AP examinations, though still flawed, can provide a better indication of future performance and current knowledge than either the SAT subject or reasoning tests. All in all, I think the SAT really is an outdated system that we don't need anymore.
I agree that colleges place way too much importance on tests like the SAT and ACT. But I don't think they should be done away with. Things need to be changed, though. Some truly intellegent students are missing out on great colleges simply because of a number attached to their name, from one test they took sometime in the their Junior or Senior year.
BTW, Great SAT Chem score! :)
I agree that the SAT is an unfair way to test high-school students since it is no longer a test that serves it's original purpose, which was to to see how well students will test or do in college. The SAT instead just tests the student on how well it takes the test -- that's all. What's the point in that? Before the actual letters in SAT used to mean, "Student Aptitude Test" or "Student Achievement Test" but now the acronym does not stand for anything at all. I also believe that the SAT should be replaced or at least abandoned altogether, but the fact that it's been practically embedded into the college application process that it would be nearly impossible to eliminate it -- it is a standard after all, and despite the unfairness of the SAT, colleges need a standard to judge the millions of students applying all over the nation. Until we are able to find a new standard, the SAT will be continually used to judge a student applying for college.
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"No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it." -- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
I totally know exactly what you meant. I am a senior and I got all A's last qaurter at community college, but when I went to take the SAT's though I got a 1410 which is okay I guess but under my University's standard. Has anyone ever heard of test anxiety? lol I have to have it I swear, but I also know I am an intellegint person I just don't test well.
On the other hand, I think the basis for the SAT is your wealth of knowledge, not just your intelligence. It is how much you have memorized from all your highschool courses. Colleges want to know how much you have retained from your classes which translate into how well you will do in their courses since there usually ten times harder.
Still personally I completley agree with you. The SAT is crap and should be eliminated.
They havent been able to find mine.
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