Nearly every college requires a certain minimum score on the ACT or SAT to be accepted, but there has been a rising criticism of their effectiveness. Firstly, these tests rarely reflect what is actually taught in public schools. Studying for them requires an in-depth examination of the test itself, rather than on information acquired throughout high school. A study found that less than half of the ACT questions in the English and math sections aligned with the common core curriculum, which although by no means a federal standard, is the closest thing America has to a uniform curriculum. So, although the ACT and SAT are meant to be ways for colleges to get an idea of a students academic standing by comparing them with the same test, it cannot accurately do this since different states (even different schools in the same county) have different curriculum that may put students at an advantage or disadvantage depending on how closely the test happens to adhere to their education. Further, even if the test did accurately reflect students knowledge and capability in the four or five subjects included in the ACT and SAT, this does not necessarily correlate to college and career success. College is supposed to be a targeted education; if a student is pursuing a degree in social work, for example, proficiency in SAT science is hardly relevant. Research has found that high school GPA tends to be a better predictor of college success than ACT scores. There is also the simple fact that some people have difficulty taking tests, most commonly due to nerves resulting from the time limit. https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2020/02/07/should-colleges-abandon-sat-score-requirements/?sh=5f58f8dbedd3

**TL;DR Despite having limited knowledge of both ACT and SAT tests, I believe no examinations are accurate measurements of college preparedness.** As a British student, I am not too familiar with either ACT and SAT tests, however, when considering the English equivalent of GCSEs and A-levels, I can agree that relative attainment in these, is no representation of college or university preparedness. For instance, there is no guarantee that good grades and success in high school/secondary school will ensure success within further study, despite it being required for entry. My acceptance onto my current course was based off of my A-level grades, whereby I sat a number of times examinations, however, so far at uni, my grades have been solely based off of essays and course work assignments and I have not needed to sit any exams. I believe this to be limiting to people who struggle with exams and tests, such as the aforementioned, as this may have affected chances of enrolment. Likewise, those students who have only previously been prepped to undertake exams may later struggle when faced with alternative methods of ‘testing’. For these reasons, I believe that exams (ACT, SAT, GCSE and A-levels alike) are not appropriate measurements of college preparedness.

**TL;DR: While standardized achievement tests have no place in college admissions, standardized aptitude tests are useful in rounding out applicants' holistic academic profile and in determining future academic potential.** Standardized achievement tests – standardized assessments of crystalized intelligence – have no place in the college admission process because high school learning itself is not standardized. The interplay of funding, locale, quality of educators, external life events, and campus culture devises a unique set of advantages and disadvantages for each individual student to contend with. The quality and substance of American high school education fluctuates wildly across the country. Heck, as long as privately owned schools’ curriculums meet loose federally defined “core competencies,” they are free to concoct their very own set of available studies and graduation requirements. Thus, in the States, you’ll notice a paradox: all HS diplomas are regarded as equal, despite the fact that everyone knows each one suggests radically different competencies. When some students have nationally accredited teachers offering the comprehensive list of AP subjects, while some have at best access to one or two honors courses in tangential subjects, while still others have mandatory athletics or community service or enforced study halls, it is unfair for college admissions committees to measure every applicant’s accrued scholastic knowledge with the same yardstick. Statistically, those who’ve achieved in the past have a greater chance of continuing patterns of achievement into the future than those who do not have past records of achievement (as most of us already know). Measures of past achievement like GPA, class rank, extracurricular activities, awards, and athletics are subjective, school-specific variables. These metrics are created by particular schools to measure how well students perform in those individual school-particular conditions. Thus, non-standardized achievements come together to form a student’s profile of past achievement in a way that’s more reflective of how individual students have maneuvered their unique advantages, disadvantages, and opportunities than standardized achievement tests could ever illuminate. For this reason, standardized college admissions achievement tests – like the ACT [(1)](http://clay.sb.school/UserFiles/Servers/Server_70775/File/Students/Guidance/ACT%20and%20SAT/Difference_between_SAT_and_ACT.pdf),[(2)](https://www.discover.com/student-loans/college-planning/prep/applications/act-vs-sat-whats-the-difference),[(3)](https://www.theclassroom.com/high-school-grades-accurate-indicator-high-school-performance-6494.html), and SAT II subject tests – should be discontinued. There remains, however, a place for standardized aptitude testing in college admissions. Standardized assessments can be useful and relevant so long as they measure a student’s capacity for future learning and achieving inside a college’s specific academic environment. No matter how industrious and self-advocating a student presents themself as, there is no value in admitting students who lack certain critical thinking and reasoning skills which will prevent them from operating on the academic level the institution demands. A STEM heavyweight like MIT, for example, has a biased admissions rate towards applicants who demonstrate innately high mathematical reasoning skills (known as quantitative reasoning on the SAT). Colleges use metrics of how quickly students can process information as evidence of how effectively students will be able to adapt to and run with the new information higher education foists on them. Because colleges invest in students when they admit them, admissions committees need some quasi-objective method for determining the rate at which applicants are able to learn, which plays into how likely students are to perform up to the institution’s academic level. As an aptitude test, the SAT measures students’ language and quantitative reasoning skills [(1)](http://clay.sb.school/UserFiles/Servers/Server_70775/File/Students/Guidance/ACT%20and%20SAT/Difference_between_SAT_and_ACT.pdf),[(2)](https://www.discover.com/student-loans/college-planning/prep/applications/act-vs-sat-whats-the-difference). In fact, the SAT has been tightly correlated with IQ [(4)](https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2015/06/18/on-sat-act-iq-and-other-psychometric-test-correlations/) which, in synergy with motivation, impulse control, and industriousness, helps educate admissions committee’s guesses as to which applicants hold the most potential to excel at their school. In coaction with relevant markers of past achievement, aptitude tests are merit based assessments which are useful in rounding out applicants’ holistic academic profile and which help to predict future potential.