Death to Standardized Tests
Michael Mityok
- UBC: BA in Literature and Education
- 25+ years of teaching experience
- 10+ years of university counselor/pathway
- Michael has successfully helped students to admitted to the following universities:
- Harvard University
- MIT
- Stanford University
- University of Southern California
- Cambridge University
- University of California, Los Angeles
- New York University
- Princeton University
- Columbia University
- University of California, Berkeley
- Yale University
- Brown University
- Penn State University
- Imperial College London
The argument is simple – the tests are unfair to low-income students and are not accurate predictors of students’ success in college.
The SAT was the creation of the College Board, supposedly a nonprofit, which continues to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in myriad fees. Consider that more than 2.19 million students took the tests in 2020 — and that was during a pandemic. But the real problem is the greediness of the colleges and universities that profess that the SATs don’t matter. They claim they are “test-optional” institutions, that they don’t even require students to submit their scores anymore.
Such assurances are outright lies. First, of the US’s 2,330 bachelor’s degree-granting schools, only about half do not currently require SAT or ACT scores to be submitted for admission. And just because the others don’t require them does not mean they don’t want to see them. In fact, other than the University of California schools and a handful of others, every institution is still accepting SAT scores.
Why? Because the test results are the most cost-effective and “data-driven” means of eliminating applicants. Schools rely far too much on data analytics to build their student bodies. Also, not only do schools use the scores as an indicator of how students will perform in their classrooms, but their U.S. News & World Report rankings are still based in some measure [2] on their applicants’ average SAT or ACT scores.
It’s time they look up from their iPads and computer screens and look at their prospective students for who they are as people. Every student is unique, with distinct experiences, ideas and perspectives that can contribute to the social, cultural, physical, and intellectual zeitgeist of a specific campus. Students are being held hostage, indoctrinated from an early age with the belief that to get into elite institutions they need perfect, or close to perfect, scores. It’s time to end what is more than a failed century-old experiment to determine who supposedly has the intelligence to go to college.
And not just for the students – the other even bigger loser is Western society. We don’t benefit from one size fits all thinking/thinkers. I know this firsthand. In high school, I was told by my Vice-Principal Mr. Hall I was always going to be a loser because I didn’t have good grades. But I was not deterred. I focused on what I was genuinely passionate about – living my life on my terms. I learned from The School of Life everything I wasn’t learning in the classroom, and now I own/run a successful business. And I suspect much to Mr. Hall’s surprise, as part of that business, over the past 25 years I have helped hundreds of kids get accepted to elite universities in North America and Great Britain.
At the end of the day, there are far more effective measures of how a student will perform in college than standardized tests. These tests were originally designed to be aptitude or achievement tests, to demonstrate either how you will perform academically in a rigorous environment, or to show how much you’ve learned. However, there is a clear link between household income and test performance. If you practice enough and have the right resources, you will see your score rise. Test prep and tutoring is a multibillion-dollar industry; those who can afford such resources will generally outperform those who do not.
If schools truly wished to level the playing field and provide opportunities for students who previously could have never entered their gates, then they would simply go totally test blind, not test optional. In fact, if schools are really committed to building a well-rounded class and their goal is to predict how your kid will fit in their incoming class, then they will drop standardized tests and hire a full complement of admissions staff that will approach admissions with a holistic mindset that values life experience and passion even more than grades.
