Who doesn't hate the SAT? While it may seem like years have passed since you had to get up early on a Saturday, and take a test to boot, the SAT is now in the hotseat. After acknowledging errors, 4,000 students were found to have been affected.
Even more interesting is the fact that 100 of the 4,000 students had applied to AU. The admissions office said they reviewed the affected applications, but that no decisions were changed. You would think the numbers would be more spread out across the country, but AU is climbing in the rankings; 85th in the latest U.S. News college guidebook.
Standardized testing has been criticized heavily lately, especially since it has been central to President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education program. What this has wrought is the dangerous practice of teaching students who to take tests, not teaching them the actual concepts.
Now that the recent errors have been found, it should lead us to step back and consider why so much emphasis, as well as blood, sweat, and tears, is placed on the numerical value the College Board calculates and sends you in the mail. Students are more than a verbal and math score, and their applications should be looked at for what they have to offer the university as a whole.
Something that should strike fear into the hearts of current college students everywhere is the plans some have to introduce a standardized test for graduating collegians. Besides being highly unpopular, we feel this idea is useless and suspect. There is no possible way to test students with the wide variety of colleges we have in America and have it be fair. Additionally, those people propsoing this plan are connected to the testing companies, who would stand to make millions more if they could torture students four years after the
SAT.
