Originally Posted by
Sloppy Joe
Gosh, I wonder how Druff did on the SAT to reach this opinion?
I'm not sure on this one, but anecdotally my parents definitely poured a lot of money into getting my math score up, and it worked.
I've always thought that standardized tests should be part of the puzzle in determining admissions for undergrads to university, but not overly so. More so for graduate degrees.
Anecdotally again, my sister was a near perfect candidate as a high scho student with a high IQ, but inexplicably sucked comparatively on both the SAT and ACT, costing her admission to her preferred school of Princeton. She ended up transferring there anyways and graduated with a 4.0.
The SAT isn't perfect. Yes, prep courses can help, though only to some degree. They can quickly teach you some things you didn't know, and more importantly, they show you how to avoid the trick questions and generally get familiar with the test. However, they cannot magically make someone bad at math score high on the math part. I had a friend in high school who, despite being very smart, just sucked at math. He did better than me on the verbal part, but could never get an average math score, no matter how hard he tried.
The SAT also focuses too much on vocabulary on the verbal part, and students who aren't fast test-takers are at a disadvantage, as the time to complete each section isn't very long. I remember barely finishing some of the sections in the allotted time.
I wouldn't mind seeing the SAT further reformed or replaced with another test. I know the ACT has been growing in popularity over the years.
However, it's important to have some standardized test in place for admissions, due to the wildly different grading standards at high schools. This is especially true because many high school classes are graded on a curve, so often you're graded on how you perform compared to your immediate peers, rather than how you perform compared to other kids in the state. Furthermore, some schools -- both public and private -- have been engaging in grade inflation in order to give the appearance they're doing better than they really are.
I actually disagree with you about grad school. I feel that standardized tests for grad school are less important, since the student has already demonstrated whether or not he/she has the ability to succeed in college. Yes, grading practices also differ widely from college to college, but grad schools already know which colleges are tougher to achieve high grades. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a standardized test for grad school admissions, but I could more see dropping that than I can see dropping the SAT.
If schools really felt the SAT wasn't accomplishing what they wanted, I wouldn't be so skeptical of this decision. Unfortunately, it seems this is mainly being driven by SJW types who believe the test to be "racist" and "classist", which is a lot of nonsense. As I said, wealthier people have always had the edge when it comes to academics, and it's silly to drop one particular test because whites and Asians are outperforming the other races. You need to look at the underlying cause and attack that, not the test which exposes the problems.