An SAT prep teacher once told me that the SATs only test you on one thing: your ability to take the SATs.
It seems that the college admissions process, as a whole, only tests one thing: your ability to get into a particular college.
Claims about the unfairness of college admissions are nothing new, and that discussion has always centered around the SATs.
Some decry the SAT for not accurately reflecting what students learn in their high school classes.
Some claim it doesn't serve as an adequate "predictor" of how well students will do in college. According to a University of California study last fall, the SAT I is more socio-economically biased than than the subject-based SAT IIs, which were also reported to better predict college performance than the former.
And a spring ago, some top American business executives, with the National Urban League at the helm, signed a letter encouraging universities to pay less attention to applicants' standardized test scores and more to their potential for leadership and growth.
Last week, The New York Times reported that the College Board is planning an overhaul of the test.
The College Board is spinning the change as a way to improve the education of high schoolers. After the revamping, the composition of the test will supposedly make those planning to take the test focus more on their classwork.
Anything that will make high schoolers more diligent students can't be a bad thing, even if I have severe doubts that an annoying Saturday test could possibly motivate 16 year olds to spend that extra hour studying trigonometry.
But much of the real problem lies in testing itself -- no matter how you cut it. Revamping the SAT to make it "fairer" or more indicative of what students have learned in high school only further obscures the real problems -- inherent and daunting -- in our nation's college admissions process. The SAT is built on the naive premise that an adequately objective way of comparing college applicants is possible.
In an article in The Daily Pennsylvanian last year about the letter from business leaders, Penn Admissions Dean Lee Stetson called the SATs "a measure of many measures in the admissions process."
Unfortunately, none of the "many measures" is adequate. The SAT is a quick fix to the problem of finding objectivity in admissions -- a problem that likely has no solution.
The test lets institutions of higher education think they have got some way of looking at high schoolers from all backgrounds and from all regions on some sort of standard platform. The theory is that other parts of the admissions process are inadequate -- and filled with loopholes. Universities can't really compare students from across the nation based on grade point averages or extracurricular activities, or what goes on page 217 of your autobiography.
And the fact that every single person in your family for eight generations has gone to Penn -- along with that $8 million donation from your parents -- means that those things probably won't matter too much.
In a system as haphazard as the college admissions process, every "measure" -- especially a standardized test -- only makes an unfair system look less so at the surface.
But it's not time to give up hope.
As it stands, college admissions is a crap shoot -- for students and universities.
High school seniors market themselves to schools that market themselves back. "Measures," like test scores and GPAs, are mere selling points.
Starting from scratch -- and one simple question -- may be the only way to improve the process: What are high schoolers and colleges really looking for?
And if a college entrance exam is to be a "predictor" of college success, what is "success," and should universities, then, only be searching for students they think will get good grades in college?
A university that answers "yes" to the second part of that question isn't a nurturing academic environment.
But removing -- rather than revising -- standardized exams entirely from the admissions process would be the first step toward revamping the admissions process as a whole. Getting rid of the test would not be easy, but it would take away the convenient option that colleges can use to make their final student "purchasing" decisions. And it could make them think more about why they accept the students they do.
Once an institution defines whom it's looking for -- and it shouldn't just be high schoolers who pay attention in class -- it can start finding the right criteria by which to judge them.
Not that any of the current criteria can't stay -- page 217 can tell a lot about a person -- but for now, looking for solutions in standardized tests, among other things, stands grossly in the way.
Matthew Mugmon is a junior Classical Studies major from Columbia, Md., and executive editor of The Daily Pennnsylvanian .
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