Do SAT Tests Help or Hinder the College Application Process?

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Test Taking, College Preperation

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(Photo : Flickr/College Board) SAT prep

Test taking is an integral part of class room procedure, designed to gauge how much students are listening to and retaining the materials learned. While most educators use tests as a class room learning tool, there are some teachers who feel that testing is both an inappropriate and ineffective way of getting students to learn and an unfair way of gauging a given students potential (For instance, what if the student is simply a poor test taker).

Take the SAT test for example. Every year juniors and seniors with sweaty palms, nervous stomachs and heads crammed full of test taking strategies sit down to take perhaps the most important test of their high school career; A test that could essentially make or break their future, determining what college they get into and, in some cases, how much financial backing they receive from those colleges.

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At their core, these tests focus on verbal, math and writing abilities and how well (or poor) a student performs on this test can speak for test-takers' entire academic potential.

The question remains then: Is it fair?

Some researchers have asserted that the SAT is not a good predictor of academic performance in college, once socioeconomic status (SES) - usually measured as a combination of parents' education and family income - and high school grade point average are taken into account; Previously, opponents have even suggested that the SAT is fundamentally biased against students from low-SES backgrounds, acting as a barrier that prevents them from gaining admission to college.

However, a newly released study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, after analyzing data from 143,606 students at 110 colleges and universities and contrasting their findings with data from the University of California system that had been studied in previous research, found that both the SAT and high school grades contributed to predicting academic performance in college.

And, contrary to previous research, taking parents' education and family income into account had little effect on the relationship between SAT scores and college performance. These findings suggest that the SAT remains a useful indicator for college admissions decisions.

The results also show that students with low SES were less likely to go through the college application process to begin with.

However, statistics show low-income students who do well in highschool versus of high-income students who do poorly in highschool still have a higher drop out rate than their more affluent peers.

And critics of the SAT still maintain that instead of testing what students know, ( not taking into account the inferior level of education adolescents from low income communities receive throughout their elementary to high school careers compared to sudents from higher-income communities) the SAT tests only the students ability to take the SAT. It is an exam where preparation in stadegy and time management are more important then actually reviewing materials learned in school.

Moreover, students of low SES would not be able to afford the test prep materials or classes needed for the SAT, unless provided to them by the school; where many low income public schools lack AP courses there is almost guaranteed assurance that those same schools would lack SAT prep courses.