Standardized Test Scores

There has been considerable debate on the use of standardized test scores in American undergraduate admission. In the recent decade, the SAT and the ACT have become an increasingly important factor in evaluating the burgeoning number of college applicants, largely because of their comprehensiveness and standardization in the education industry. According to The New York Times, an overwhelming amount of 1,666,017 students took the ACT and 1,664,479 took the SAT in 2012. These dedicated students didn’t just take the tests for the sake of knowledge, they painstakingly complied to these examinations because most of their dream colleges want to assess their academic potential in a form of a comprehensive number. Despite its prevalence, not everybody …show more content…
However, the debate between test-required and test-optional policies in evaluating applicants and building a strong scholarly student body in higher education is not just simply black-or-white. While the common argument for test-optional supporters is that standardized tests limit access to college, some can argue that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing because selectivity is what keeps our higher education competitive and rigorous. In the ongoing battle between maintaining college selectivity and promoting equal opportunity, the narrow scope in the discourse of standardized test scores falsely polarizes the issue and hinders the progress of college admission in …show more content…
In her article “College Admissions in Twenty-First Century America” published in the Harvard Educational Review, Rebecca Zwick contends that these tests are detrimental to college applications because they are viewed as “pivotal gatekeepers” that restrict the lower income students from accessing a “highly valued commodity” (Zwick). She further expands her argument by including a chart that shows the distribution of test scores based on family household income obtained from FairTest.org. Although the chart shows a mild correlation between the wealthier families and higher SAT scores, Zwick’s outright assumption that richer kids do better on standardized testings represents a false clause argument because such interpretation confuses correlation with causation. There are a multitude of factors that affect students’ scores including their reading comprehension, their logical reasoning, and ultimately their hard work. These factors can not be purchased through money or gained through test preparation courses, but they are rather obtained through years of studying, reading, and thinking that one has accumulated in his/her