In the wake of last week's news that former Claremont McKenna College Vice President and Dean of Admissions Richard Vos manipulated CMC students' SAT scores in order to maintain the institution's standing in US News & World Report college rankings, it's apparent that standardized test scores are now more important to the external audiences who evaluate the "prestige" of our schools than they are to the internal audiences who evaluate the test-takers.
It is time to reevaluate how and why we use standardized testing in the college admission process.
I don't mean to disparage the exams - they have a purpose and serve that purpose quite well when used appropriately. Standardized tests have proved to be a useful tool for gauging first-year or first-semester college performance. They can be an important piece of information to admission officers as they attempt to make informed, equitable decisions on students' applications.
However, standardized tests are the double-edged sword of the college admission process. Far too often they're interpreted as measure's of an applicant's intelligence or viewed as predictors of long-range student performance in college. The inaccurate assumption is made that because the exams are standard, the scores can be evaluated uniformly across an applicant pool. The truth is that who you are and where you come from has a lot to do with how well you score on the SAT or ACT, and that these scores must be viewed through a lens to be interpreted appropriately.
Most of us who evaluate applications are capable and mindful of evaluating standardized test scores the right way*, but as a society, we are not. As a society, we use test score ranges to rank institutions and determine if admission to a particular school is realistic or not. These illogical uses of test scores feed our obsession with them, and they contribute to the unnecessary pressures on higher education leaders that lead to incidents such as what occurred at CMC. Again, SAT and ACT scores have a purpose, but change is needed to lessen their importance, or presumed importance.
*The best acknowledgement of college admission and higher education professionals treating standardized testing appropriately can be seen in the rising number of institutions that have adopted test-optional admission policies.
The evils done by using standardized test scores to judge an institution's or an applicant's worth outweigh the benefits they offer to the evaluation of an application. Prospective students narrow their college searches based on their performance on one test. Institutions conduct searches for students based on tests. Rankings determine who is elite. Little or nothing is based on what actually occurs in the classroom, at the high school or the collegiate level, in our test-based society.
It's time for an end. Schools that have made testing optional have functioned effectively without them - it's time for more schools to consider doing so. Higher education needs a leader in this realm. We need a Harvard, or a Stanford, or a UVA to declare that standardized tests are no longer a requirement for admission. Only then will the US News & World Reports of the world decide that test scores should no longer be a significant piece to their rankings.
The SAT and the ACT once revolutionized college admission... but there time is over. We have the ability to function without them. My question is, do we have the courage?
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