Recently California state colleges prohibited the use of the SAT exam as a factor for college admissions. The SAT exam is a sort of ritual for all high school students who wish to attend college taken during their junior or senior years (some high achievers even take it in their sophomore or freshman years) to try to get the best score possible to make themselves attractive to colleges. I'd been hearing for years how the SAT might discriminate against some students in the types of questions they answer, but I also thought that the test had tried to balance that out by appealing to different backgrounds in their reading passages. Ultimately, the test is divided into verbal and math sections, so there's only so much you can do to make it "non-discriminatory," although I'm not sure how testing those subjects discriminates against underrepresented populations.....math and vocabulary/ reading comprehension seem like pretty basic tenets of a college student's curriculum. Trying to look at it from the other perspective, though, the SAT does allow wealthier students from wealthy backgrounds to prepare constantly for the exam and get as much help to take the exam as money can buy, whereas people from poorer backgrounds don't have the economic resources or the time to worry about college and taking the SAT. Personally, I have generally fond memories of taking the SAT, not necessarily of studying for it and reading short passages from scholarly articles but in the thrill of taking the exam, I actually like the adrenaline rush of going into an exam under time pressure and using the skills I'd gathered over weeks of studying and memorizing vocabulary words through flashcards. And I liked doing the math puzzles, as they represented a small challenge and would occasionally stump me for a little bit before I would inevitably figure it out. Looking back, I think that's the big challenge with the SAT: certain students can just naturally figure out the math problems through just knowing math rules, studying math at a young age, having analytical brains, etc., that the math questions are a cinch, while on the other end of the spectrum some students rack their brains for the right answer but just can't seem to crack it. The testmakers couldn't make it easier for fear of making it too easy for the top scorers but couldn't make it harder due to the low scorers.
My first reaction when I heard the news was, "that's a lot of SAT teachers who are suddenly out of a job in California!" And it will probably continue throughout the country, as California will likely set the trend for other states to adopt the same measures. Because of the number of high school students (and their parents!) who see the SAT as the Holy Grail of exams to get into the college of their dreams, SAT prep courses make tons of money if only from profiting off the fears of students (Andrew Yang, the presidential candidate from 2020, made his fortune from SAT prep). I can understand giving the option to colleges not to accept the SAT exam, but to disallow the use of the SAT exam seems to be overcompensating in the wrong direction. Is there an alternative to the SAT? How do colleges make decisions now? Just based on GPA and "soft factors" like extracurricular activites, the essay, leadership, etc.? Difficult to quantify and compare betwen students, even for GPA, which have different scales around the country (4.0, 5.0, my school was a 6.0 system) and varies based on how lenient schools are with grades.
Should we just make it a pass/fail, a sort of entrance exam for college? MJ just took her NCLEX exam for nurses which tests her qualification to be a nurse. Should there just be a qualification exam for college students, you need to know this much before going on to college?
Taking away the SAT also contemplates what makes a good student anyway and what's the role of college? If it's to gain knowledge, I've learned the hard way from going through different educational systems that the quality of education really depends on yourself, how much you apply yourself. (There may be a small difference in private v. public schools in terms of how much they value the individual student and cater to your needs as opposed to just taking your tuition money and pumping you out of their system like a number. The value of the school is mostly just the school name, the name on your diploma when advertising yourself out to others. Should the SAT be used to determine one's ability to pay $$$ to get that piece of paper to be able to advertise yourself? This whole process implies that college is super valuable and that the SAT shouldn't be a determinant for such a prestigious accolade of going to top schools. I don't see it that way; I think the creme rises to the top no matter what, especially in today's society where anyone can learn anything or do anything they want with the internet. The colleges just become brand names that people pay hefty amounts of money to obtain, and the cycle perpetuates itself because the best students go to the best schools and go on to do well, leading more students to believe it's worth it. What if college is just a.......wait for it.......pyramid scheme that the whole world has just bought into blindly without thinking about it? MJ used to be in the world of academia and didn't come out of it with a great impression of it, and that's what I think all of the SAT and admissions and diversity is doing is just perpetuating the myth that college is the end-all and be-all, when in reality it's just a place to meet a lot of students who are just like you trying to make it in the world and so you can have the "college experience" of living in a college atmosphere for 3/4 years of your life, a rite of passage and a diploma at the end.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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