SAT Review Strengths

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.

The SAT is a test that many feel helps the privileged. Many also believe that it is unnecessary and that it does not actually prepare students for college or the future. Charles Murray in the article, “Abolish the SAT” also believes that the SAT needs to be “abolished” and writes on why we do not need the SAT in a critical and vigorous manner.

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 SAT are standardized tests, formally called the Scholastic Aptitude Tests and are used by most colleges

If the test truly showed the academic potential of students to colleges, it would not be discriminatory based on any factors besides those relevant to college admissions, such as intelligence and passion. It is very difficult to effectively showcase a student’s potential with standardized tests, because they “focus only on cognitive dimensions, ignoring many other qualities that are essential to student success” (NCTE). These cognitive dimensions are very limited in scope, and are not effective in portraying all of the skills that a student may have. On the SAT, these focuses are reading, writing, and math. On the ACT, these focuses are english, math, reading, and science.

The truth concerning the predictive abilities of the SAT and ACT is clear; there are simply superior methods to evaluate potential college success. College admissions need to rely more heavily on factors such as High School GPA and SAT Subject and AP Tests, as these pieces of data contain a higher level of predictive power than SAT and ACT scores. Through the comparison of subject-specific tests and GPA to broad standardized tests, it is evident that the principles of our education system must be reinvented.

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.

Imagine a test capable of making or breaking a student's chances of getting into his or her dream college. Imagine a test score that can be easily influenced, but only through thousands of dollars worth of coaching. Now imagine that same test but biased towards certain crowds of students while also being incapable of accurately predicting their futures. Is this the test you want for colleges to use in order to distinguish students? This is the SAT—famous for the unnecessary pressure it presents to students as well as the unfair disadvantages it presents to many others. Since these SAT scores are extremely artificial, SAT tests are not an accurate predictor for future success.

“The SAT in recent years has become the main assessment used in some states to measure how much high school students have learned” (Zinshteyn), it is big step into becoming a college a student since the year it was enacted in 1926. The SAT is a standardized test that measures your skills in both math and english, along with your writing, it is mainly taken between junior and senior year of high school and is a major impact on deciding your college admittance depending on your college. A new SAT was enacted recently claiming to level the playing field for all students who deserve and are willing to work hard for en education, “The overall topics have not changed the SAT still quizzes you on math, english and writing. The only difference is that the new SAT combines reading and writing into one section within the SAT”

While SAT participation rates vary widely from state to state these comparisons are misleading. In states where their colleges and university do not require students to take the SAT and rely more on the ACT, the SAT test takers population is smaller. For states where colleges and universities that require the SAT exam for admission, more students take the SAT hence showing an unbalance in states where the test is not widely used. States with the higher averages, will also be states that have less test-takers. The lower scoring states will have a higher number of test-takers. Comparing states with a lower number of test-takers, to states with a higher number of test-takers is unfair and

This study also stated that, “every standardized test has a certain “error of measurement” which means that a given score could actually be off by several points in either direction. High stakes, however, have single scores as the cut-off point. Those scores do not account for the inaccuracies that all test publishers acknowledge”(azstandards). There have been many studies in which students take the same test on different days, and their score varies greatly. High stakes testing does not give any consideration to these errors.

The College Board and ACT nonprofit organizations, known for developing and administering the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Testing (ACT) assessment respectively, represents higher education’s widely accepted college readiness determinant for prospective students. These examinations empirically measure a student’s grasp of reading, writing, and mathematics – subjects taught every day in high school classrooms. As a result, they typically constitute a significant proportion of the total entrance requirements for prospective students to relevant institutions of higher learning and denote a serious endeavor unto itself. Students commonly take one or both of these examinations during their junior or senior year of high school as dictated by an institution’s administrative guidelines, although most colleges now allow either test as part of their proprietary admission formulas. And since it turns out there exists subtle differences in the tests themselves, students should review research concluding certain individuals may be better candidates for maximizing performance on one examination versus another.

Generally speaking, the SAT is a one-day test where students are forced to test in specific areas such as math, reading and writing in an allotted time period. An individual’s success cannot be measured by a snapshot of time. Many believe that time does not help reflect a student’s overall performance because there are multiple of variables that can happen throughout the time period and day to that individual. In addition, the SAT testing does not take into account other academic areas that a student may excel in. While a student’s GPA on their transcript can show administrators the student’s strengths and weakness since it reflects an accumulative of four years in high school, thus it is able to better represent a student’s academic

In America, a child is expected, as early as the age of five years old, to start taking tests that will measure their skills and determine if they are ready to move on to the next level of their education. This concept of testing in the United States is not new or uncommon. Standardized achievement tests have been used since the 1800s. In the beginning of the 20th century, there were many acclaimed colleges, and a few universities, all across the nation. Unfortunately during this time there was no systematic assessment to test the abilities or knowledge of the possible incoming students, because of this the College Board was created. Soon after the SAT or the Scholastic Aptitude Test came about. Before this type of standardized testing, individual

The following category discusses the reliability and validity of the SAT. Firstly, the reliability measures the consistency and steadiness of the SAT scores and validity measures how the test is being consumed. The SAT is a reliable test for the reason that if an individual takes the SAT multiple times he or she would receive comparable or higher scores each time the test is given to the individual due to the culture of the test. The SAT is valid since the test is designed to measure an individual cognitive ability and the achievement of students. Research has proved that cognitive test validities are generalizable and predictive of academic performance (Shen, Sackett, Kuncel, Beatty, Rigdon & Kiger, 2012). The SAT shows that more selective