When innocent underclassmen look up to their guiding lights of high school – the upperclassmen – they often ask what to expect in the next few years. The prospect that “Junior year is rough!” is stated often in the constant thread of communication of high school students. “Senior year is fine after college applications,” is shared as well. That leaves the one people already know is coming: “Have you taken the SAT yet?” leaving the nervous sophomore to reply, “Where, what, when, why, how?”
The three-hour long test often resides on your schedule around junior year, just in time for your college applications in the fall. But as an effect of the COVID pandemic, the SAT has gone from a must to simply optional, with many colleges becoming test blind.
An article on grade inflation tells us that “in the shape-shifting landscape of college admissions, grades have never been more important. Now more than 80 percent of four-year colleges do not require standardized tests.” The application shares many important points, from your GPA to your course grades to the personal essay. This puts the emphasis on standing out to colleges by being a well-rounded student with specific interests and abilities, instead of a number from *the* test. While David Leonhardt argues that, due to grade inflation, “test scores are more reliable than high school grades,” ultimately test scores limit colleges from seeing how a student performs each year of high school – not on a random Saturday an hour away from their hometown.
Another argument posed by from David Leonhardt is that “without test scores, admissions officers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between applicants who are likely to do well at elite colleges and those who are likely to struggle.” This puts the emphasis on elite schools – schools the majority of test takers are not applying to, because, according to Highschool Cube, “only about 3 percent of high school students in the United States are admitted to an elite college.”
Everyone in high school is different, and the SAT can overlook that. In a New York Times piece responding to Leonhardt’s opinion, we learn how students with learning disabilities “struggle with standardized exams, and the College Board’s accommodations system does little to help. These students’ high school experience often involves the development of strategies that will enable them to self-advocate and succeed in a college setting, in spite of their disabilities. But these skills do not often surface on standardized exams.” Students with skills garnered from in or outside of school can focus on them during college, something that does not come as easily in high school. The New York Times highlights that, saying, “College, unlike previous educational settings, offers the opportunity for them to specialize and thrive in these specific domains via choice of major. The SAT’s broad and generalized approach fails to capture this nuanced aspect of student potential.”
The same New York Times piece ties it all together, stating, “An emphasis on SAT scores overlooks the diverse ways students manifest their readiness for college.” Proving their points, “In the three years since U.C. eliminated the SAT requirement, it has seen no diminution in the academic performance of entering students.”
While the SAT can be beneficial for your college application, focusing more on your everyday grades and brainstorming ideas for your personal essay (and getting coffee for your letter-of-rec-writing-teacher) should be more your concern than what day you will take the SAT on, where it will be, and how you should be getting ready. Take the emphasis off the test and your college applications can still shine brightly.
