Dear: All Universities Admission Office
As fall arrives, another college application season is about to start. Just like me last year, another class of seniors will be getting ready to send in their applications and hoping for their acceptance letter. There is one thing I wish to address to the admission office. Students are more than a test score! Standardized tests play such a big role in application review process than it should be. There are numerous researches show that standardized tests don't measure anything other than the fact of how much money their parents spend on test prep courses, this established a very unhealthy education environment for students. Cheating also becomes something people are willing to risk in order to achieve higher scores. This is very unfair to students who cannot afford expensive prep course, or who worked hard for the score they earn. Therefore, I suggest College admission office stop judging a student based on their test scores, there has got to be a better way to measure the possibility of how successful the student will be in college.
Standardized testing first originated from China where the government used it to evaluate scholar’s talent to fulfill spots in the government. Formal tests first appeared in the USA was an intelligence test for soldiers in World War I, for today the number one test is probably SAT and ACT. SAT was first introduced by the college board in 1926 which tested basic knowledge of vocabulary and math skills. After World War II SAT became widely used by universities to measure student’s admission to today. The question is “Is this is the best way to measure a student?”
I grow up in China, where standardized tests originated. If you ever wonder why Asian kids score so high on standardized tests, there is a reason behind it and no it’s not because we are born with such talents or has superpowers for tests. I still remember back in China, weeks before exams my teacher will start this crazy test prep process. My teachers will pass out different versions of practice tests and what we must do is make at least five copies of each practice test. The next few weeks all we do is take these practice tests repeatedly and figure out any strategies that could help you solve the problem quicker. We repeat until we know the answer without even finish reading the problem. I remember getting in trouble because I’m so tired of repeat the same test over and over again, so I started to write down random answers. No matter how much I hate this process, the truth is, it works. I never scored lower than 90 on any standardized tests in China. One thing my teacher said really stuck with me is “There’s only a certain way they are going to ask these questions if you practice enough and seen enough questions there is no way you can’t score high.” If we apply the same theory to the SAT and ACT does it mean if we prepare it enough, we will be able to score higher? If so then do SAT and Act really measure studen...
