College Admissions Test Flaws

With college admissions relying so highly on these tests many bright and capable students are getting left with little options (Sternberg 7). These students are facing this because the ACT and SAT primary focus on a narrow segment of skills that are needed to become a person that makes significant differences to the world (Sternberg 7). College’s argue that the admission test give them a quick glimpse of what the students potential is because they do not have to time to individually evaluate each potential student. This may be true but we need a better way to distinguish a person’s abilities than just a simple score on a test.

Standardized testing has been around since the early 1900’s. Today, it determines a high school student’s future. Every year juniors in high school start to prepare months in advance for the SAT’s and ACT’s. Along with the test itself, comes stress that is not necessary. The debate of standardized tests defining a student’s academic ability or not has become a recent popular controversial topic. Many colleges and universities are starting to have test optional applications because they are realizing that a single test score does not demonstrate the knowledge of a student. There is more value in a student that should rule an acceptance or rejection. In the article, “SAT Scores Help Colleges Make Better Decisions” Capterton states, “The SAT has proven to be valid, fair, and a reliable data tool for college admission” (Capterton). Capterton, president of the College Board, believes that the SAT’s and ACT’s should be used to determine a student’s acceptance because it is an accurate measure. What Capterton and deans of admissions of colleges and universities don’t know is the abundant amount of resources upper class families have for preparation, the creative talents a student has outside of taking tests, and the amount of stress they put on a 17 year old.

The purpose of this proposal is to examine current and future Iowa State University admissions decisions processes. At the present time most colleges, including Iowa State use a combination of standardized test scores, high school class rank, high school grade point average, and essays to make decisions on admissions. All of the above are good determinants of a student’s possible success in college, except standardized test scores. Standardized tests discriminate against minorities and are not a good overall indicator of a student’s potential. For these reasons and others, Iowa State should not use standardized test scores when making admissions

Creativity is necessary in the world. Creative thinkers are what help push the world forward. Scientists, artists, journalists, are all creative thinkers, yet today’s standardized tests don’t accurately reflect the creativity that students possess. In fact, standardized tests such as ISTEP, ECAs, PSATs, ACTs and SATs, drive students to the breaking point. College requirements are getting stricter, so high school students are forced to buckle down and work harder. But what if you are very creative but yet a poor test taker? Some colleges only accept students based on how well they did on their SAT scores. This rising issue stresses high school students out every year. Colleges need to use various admission criteria other than standardized tests to determine whether or not to accept students.

Einstein once said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Likewise, if a poor test-taker is judged by their SAT score, they could be forced to attend an inadequate institute of higher education. For decades, the SAT has been “the test” that makes or breaks a student's chances of getting into their top college. Generally, the privileged populace do well, but minorities and women do not come out as strong and are therefore limited to college choice. The SAT has proven to be an unsuitable, biased method for predicting success of students in college.

By now, everyone has come to the conclusion that SAT is a flawed system. The test is designed to determine the future of high school students. Its job is to capture a snapshot of what a student has learned over the course of their academic career. Unfortunately, this is not what happens. Instead of treating a student’s score as just a snapshot, colleges treat a student’s score as their complete academic intelligence. What the system fails to realize is that not all students are good test takers. A student could study for weeks, but when the curator says “You may begin” their mind goes blank. Furthermore, the education system has become too dependant on the SAT to calculate a student’s intelligence. The real emphasis should be on the student’s GPA, essays, extracurriculars, volunteer work, and how much they challenged themselves. Focusing on these aspects allows the college to review an applicant’s work ethic.

Standardized tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful, making them both inaccurate measures of collegiate success and detrimental to students’ educations as schools refocus their curricula on test preparation. Standardized tests don’t measure other important elements of a student. There is a countless amount of important characteristics that are not measured in standardized testing including “creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty, and integrity” (“Student Achievement”). Each and every one of these characteristics are extremely important for a person to have to live in the real world, which requires a person to think abstractly at times. The standardized test doesn’t test the most important things that is essential to survival in the real

Colleges can consider high school GPA as the alternative for test scores. Almost all of the schools during admission completely overlook high school GPA. William C. Hiss, a principal investigator of Defining promise, declares “High school grades matter, and they matter a lot” (Maitre, par.2). It is not fair for many students like Ms. Casimir, a sophomore attending Wake Forest University, who scored 1580 in SAT. This was “an embarrassment” as she graduated high school “with a 4.0” (Simon, par.10). Her dreams to go to “Cornell” and “Davidson” was shattered but yet she was admitted by the “Wake Forest University which gave her full ride without seeing her SAT score and she has 3.2 GPA now” (Simon, par.10). It’s not a miracle as diligence and

You are sitting in the testing room, anxiety rushing down your body. The smell of the freshly printed scantrons consumes your nose. The fears of forgetting the math formulas, running out of time, and not knowing the answer distract you from focusing on the test. The SAT, in other words, the scholastic aptitude test, also known as the test that destroys the lives of millions of high school students, is about to take place and determine your intelligence in the perspective of the various colleges you are about to apply to. The SAT is a collection of multiple-choice sections that unreliably measure a student performance through critical reading, math, and writing sections, asking questions intended to trick the test taker and convince them into picking the wrong answer choice. A majority of colleges and universities require students to take the SAT in addition to submitting their transcripts and college applications, however they have a standard as to what score a student must receive in order to be accepted. Thousands of students have their dreams crushed and are rejected from their ideal school because of the inability to score high on the test out of 2400. Students with limitless amounts of talent never get the opportunity to nurture their unique skills because the schools focus more on the student’s SAT score, instead of their overall strengths and expertise. SAT scores should not have a prominent role in college acceptance in that the test is socioeconomically biased to

The SAT is a standardized test widely used for college and university admissions in the United States. It was first introduced in 1926, and its name and scoring system have changed several times throughout the years. Many students around the world that want to pursue post-secondary institutions in the US make it a point to write the SAT at least once in their high school career to better their chances of getting a higher score. This test has three parts to it – one reading, writing and one math. In order to achieve the best score that they can possibly get and be placed in the highest possible percentile, students may decide to attend SAT preparation classes starting from the early years of High/Middle School. The unfortunate reality of these extra preparation courses is that they are quite expensive, and due to this, they mostly cater towards to higher or higher-middle class families. Courses that provide extra preparation such as Ivy Global are not very affordable to many families and so students. According to many statistics and news reports, the higher the test taker’s family income, the higher their scores in the test. This has been a topic of great controversy as we have grown in the modern society

The Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT is a very well known test, especially by high school students across America. This test consist of 138 questions, all multiple choice except for several math graphs, divided into two sections-math and verbal, both scored on a scale of 200 to 800 (Pacenza). The SAT’s are currently a determining factor for college admissions. This paper will only address the SAT’s, not the PSAT’s or the ACT”s. The SAT was born in the 1920s-the product of a growing desire by American educators, led by Harvard president James Bryant Conant, to open up their universities to the best students across the country (Pacenza). After searching for something that could satisfy their quest for intelligence, the American educators came to a test created by Princeton psychologist Carl Brigham. Brigham had created this test because he concluded in his 1922 book, A Study of American Intelligence that, "American intelligence is declining, and will proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial admixture becomes more and more extensive." The test was created because according to the author there needed to be a “division since racial admixture becomes more and more extensive.” The author made the test to be able and pick out the smart, white males and be able to put them in recognized institutions.

Throughout high school, students strive to do their best so they can go to the college of their dreams. They excel, and are straight A students with perfect GPA’s, several extracurricular activities, and many leadership positions. These students appear to be the perfect choice for any university. Unfortunately, there might be one element that separates these students from his or her dream school- standardized test scores. This one test score could be the difference between attending an Ivy League school or an average level school. In most cases, the best way to succeed on these tests is with the help of expensive practice books or a tutor. However, many students cannot afford these tools, and as a result, will not do well. These tests are simply

An exam that measures test taking is not an accurate representation of how well a student will do in college. William Hiss, the former dean of admissions of Bates College said, “I, frankly, was surprised to find how reliable the high school GPA was. And I thought about it a lot. And I myself think that we are looking at two four-year-long demonstrations, high school and college, of self-discipline, curiosity, intellectual drive, if you will, the ability to get your homework done on time, get your papers written (Hiss 2).” There are many

Introduction: The SAT Test is an acronym for the Scholastic Aptitude Test and is primarily used as a system for college institutions to determine which students are accepted or rejected from admission. As of late the world has put a great emphasis on the SAT test with colleges not even considering admitting students that have below average scores. Needless to say that one needs to take the SAT Test to even be considered by institutions of higher education. As the importance of higher education spreads throughout the world more and more students start to maximize their SAT scores as much as possible, even going as far to attend cram schools like Princeton in an attempt to satisfy the expectations of Colleges.

Year-round students send in admissions requests and await anxiously for a response that is based on their academic excellence. This achievement can be expressed through a standardized test score, specifically the SAT. For some, this letter of acceptance is a confirmation for their futures, meaning that the test score received lays out the framework for their future successes. Because the exam raises such an importance in a student’s college future, the efficiency of the test should be examined and questions should be asked such as, is a person’s ability to comprehend basic math, reading skills, and writing techniques actually access a student’s abilities? And is