The SAT, along with its counterpart, the ACT, has long played an integral role in college admissions. In recent years, however, there has been a slow push to eliminate these tests from admissions, with claims that they disadvantage low-income students and are racist. The push only sped up with COVID-19: many schools went test-optional to facilitate students who were unable to take the test. But the tests aren’t nearly as inequitable as activists say, and dropping the tests won’t do much to make college admissions fairer.
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Is COVID-19 the End of Standardized Testing?
Here are some completely arbitrary numbers that most students will be all too familiar with (and will probably have obsessed over): 1,600, 36, 5, 800, 4.0, 45. (To anyone not in the know, in order, the numbers are a full SAT score, full ACT score, full AP score, full SAT subject test/sectional score, full GPA, full IB score.) These numbers, and what each student’s numbers are, basically defines whether or not they will go to college, and if so, which ones. However, like just about everything, COVID-19 may be about to change that.
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