“I love paying $60 to stare at a screen and take a three hour standardized test!” future you said.
You might be wondering, “Addison, how do you know what I am going to be saying in the future?” Well, the SAT requirements are coming back for some college applications next year, and it is going to impact all of us.
Whether you are impacted directly because you need to take the SAT to apply for a certain university, or you just hear your friends complaining about it, the standardized testing game is about to change.
Most universities dropped the SAT requirements when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, as it was difficult and unsafe for students to get to testing centers. I whole-heartedly feel that this was the right move, and universities should continue to not require their applicants to include an SAT score.
Perhaps the biggest reason that universities should not require SAT scores is that they are not an accurate reflection of students’ ability to perform well in school.
Everybody always goes on about how “one test doesn’t define you,” but is that not exactly what the SAT is doing?
Sure, you can take the SAT multiple times, but that one number is such a huge part of your application, which doesn’t make sense given the limited opportunities to take the test.
The SAT is only administered once a month, costs $60 each time you take it, and is only available at specific testing locations with limited spots available. Many of these spots fill up quickly so students end up traveling to different cities just to take a test.
Additionally, many families who have a lower socio-economic status are unable to afford to take the SAT repeatedly and provide their students with prep classes, which makes the SAT tailored towards those who have a higher socio-economic status.
Due to this discrepancy, many universities weigh SAT scores differently based on an applicant’s socio-economic status.
“I saw a graph that compared a students socio-economic status to their SAT score, so if they were in a lower income bracket and scored 1250, it was weighted more than a kid who scores 1315 is in a higher income bracket,” English teacher Henry Level said.
This does make the scoring more fair, but the SAT still has some gaps in representing a student’s overall academic ability.
All of the topics that are covered in the SAT are concepts that we have learned in school, meaning your GPA covers them too. However, the difference is that your GPA represents your comprehension of those topics whereas the SAT has you exercising all of those skills at once and in a timed manner – I will definitely use that skill every single day in the future!
Since the SAT covers all of the same school subjects as a GPA, shouldn’t a GPA alone be enough for admission counselors to make a decision? Some disagree.
“The SAT tells more about students’ skills in areas such as critical reading, writing, and math,” Level said.
However, with the implementation of the digital SAT, some students get harder questions than other students due to the test being adaptive. This results in some students getting really easy questions and getting more correct compared to students who get harder questions incorrect.
Although the scoring algorithm for the digital SAT is unreleased, we do know that students who are aiming for high scores are advised to focus on the second module which has the most weight, and if the questions are much harder, students might not achieve their desired score.
All of this digital SAT information is new and we do not fully understand the grading of it, so until then, colleges should be test optional and not require applicants to take the SAT.
