Welcome to my civic issues thread, through which I am discussing the drawbacks of the college admissions process. Today I am going to be looking at one of the main sources of standardization–and socioeconomic divide–in secondary education. Yes, I am going to be looking at the dreaded SAT for this semester.
The SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) has been a huge academic component of college applications for decades. As education became more universal, the importance of the SAT accelerated, acting as the primary source of standardization on college applications, enabling admissions boards to determine if prospective students would adjust well to the school curriculum’s rigor. Scores have been a turning point for not only who gets admitted, but even for who chooses to apply to certain schools in the past.
However, due to the pandemic, the importance of the SAT has dramatically declined. Since many high school juniors and seniors were unable to take the exam during the pandemic, many schools went test-optional to accommodate. More emphasis was then placed on extracurriculars, essays, letters of recommendation, and high school GPA for admission, presenting what I think of as the first step of the SAT’s downfall. Although these events have happened within the past two years, there are many other long-term successes and problems with the exam that need to be assessed before we can determine the future of the SAT. Since the SAT is mainly used as a standardization, my post today will primarily focus on the merits and loopholes of this purpose.
Being from a small town applying to college, I learned a lot about the role that the SAT plays for people of diverse backgrounds. Location is an extremely pivotal factor when evaluating college applications, as being from rural or urban areas have their perks and their disadvantages. Since student background can often make opportunity more or less accessible and competition greater or lesser, standardization is needed, but there are loopholes that need to be addressed.
When looking between any two college applications, some of the hardest factors to interpret are high school GPA and class rank. Since the classes, competition, and overall rigor of certain high schools often differ from others, an applicant’s GPA and class rank are not always reflective of how they would perform within a competing applicant’s high school curriculum. Take someone applying from the Bay Area versus someone applying from a rural town, for example. The Bay Area and other densely populated areas are often subject to more academic competition due to the sheer size of student populations and higher tax rates funding rigorous curriculums, causing some students who might be the valedictorians at any other school only rank within the top half of their graduating class. On the other hand, because rural areas encompass a smaller population, high schools are not usually as competitive as those in urban areas. Similarly, because taxes are lower, the curriculum might not be as rigorous. Therefore, some students who are valedictorians of rural high schools might not be valedictorians at larger schools, and having a 4.0 GPA at rural high schools might not translate to having a 4.0 at an urban high school or prep schools.
https://blog.powerscore.com/sat/bid-342498-which-is-more-important-the-gpa-or-the-sat-score/
As I mentioned before, the primary goal of the SAT is to provide a source of standardization for admissions officers to determine which prospective students would best match the rigor of the college’s curriculum. Since the aforementioned two situations yield such contrasting results for students who might be at the same academic level as one another, standardization similar to the SAT is needed to appropriately compare the two applications. Being a source of standardization is advantageous for admissions officers on the surface, but the limited access to SAT tutors and the actual exams make this idea of standardization biased towards people who can afford these resources.
This dilemma brings in another important factor, socioeconomic status. In general, the higher a household’s income status, the better the student performs on the SAT. Since many SAT tutors, study platforms, and taking the exam itself cost tons of money, this observation could be attributed to wealth gaps that enable students of more affluent backgrounds to access these resources when other students cannot. Although there are outliers, this trend suggests that more well-to-do students might be scoring higher simply because they could have an SAT tutor, own five Princeton Review books, and have retaken five SAT exams to get a high score. These students in affluent areas might also be given testing accommodations such as extra time and taking the exam in private spaces, helping increase scores even more. On the other hand, students from disadvantaged backgrounds might only be able to take the SAT once and have limited access to study resources, which could cause them to become stuck with a score that does not accurately reflect their knowledge. Rather than being the ultimate equalizer, the SAT divides students even more, but on the basis of socioeconomic status.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/03/rich-students-get-better-sat-scores-heres-why.html
So, should the SAT’s importance continue to decrease on college applications? Although the SAT serves as one of the most obvious sources of socioeconomic division during college admissions, there are other components of college applications that have underlying disparities that I am going to explore during my next few posts.
Hi Hannah! I was drawn in by the title of your blog, as I remember personally facing struggles when it came to taking the SAT when I was in high school. I find it absolutely insane that the pandemic has managed to make almost all standardized tests optional when it comes to the college application process. Is this going to make it easier for students to get into college? Or will this change make things more difficult? I really enjoyed how you mentioned how academics differ depending on where you live and many factors contribute to what makes the educational atmosphere so different. I don’t necessarily believe that the SAT is a fair and accurate way of testing students’ general knowledge on information they were taught through high school because some students are simply poor test takers, and the anxiety of taking such a large exam can cause them to fail just from stress. However, I do think that there needs to be another mediator on the application that represents fair academic statistics for each student.
The SAT was a new word for me when I started looking for the resources I need to apply in American Schools, coming from Ecuador we never had to worry about a standardized test that would decide where we would attend college, or if we were going to attend at all, sure there were standardized tests but those are to be able to graduate , not to pick what college you’re attending. When I started looking into it and found out I had to take the test I was freaking out because I was in another country and there is no SAT test centers in Ecuador. Then the pandemic hit and I was free of it because most of the universities I wanted to attend make it optional to submit it, which was a great relief and luck for me. I think the whole process of a standardized test that could affect your entire future is not the correct way to evaluate a students ability to learn or their quality/quantity of knowledge.
It is interesting for me to see the way that the SAT has changed in the college admissions process since I was one of the last groups of people who took the SAT as an important part of my application process. I was in the Class of 2020, so most, if not all, students in my class had to take this test to apply to their top universities. From my perspective, I feel that standardized testing has affected many students’ lives when choosing where to attend college; it is an exam that can weigh heavy on your future. That being said, is it justified to completely throw away that concept and standard due to the pandemic? Are incoming students at a higher or lower level than students who did take the SAT? These are real numbers that need to be studied when determining the future of the SAT and I think that there shouldn’t be such an abrupt shift in standardized testing standards for college applications. To a certain extent, this is also a form of financial loss for companies like college board. Are they really going to stand still and lose money from millions of students? I think that ultimately the SAT or some form of standardized testing will remain intact for the college admissions process.