In the United States, competitive exams have become a mandatory way for people to measure and compare what their children know and how they are doing in comparison to every other child. There are many problems with making it the only way to determine a child’s intelligence and the major factor in getting into a good college.
The admission decisions in most of the colleges are provided after the SAT entrance exam.The aim of the SAT exam is to measure talented individuals, and provide colleges with a common platform that can be used to compare all applicants.At the beginning, SAT stands for Scholastic Aptitude Test. In 1993, the SAT was renamed as the SAT Reasoning Test (or known as SAT I). Meanwhile, the former Scholastic Achievement Test was renamed as the SAT Subject Tests (or known as SAT II). The SAT and ACT are the two vital college entrance tests in the United States.
The entrance exam requirement is increasingly dropped by a growing number of American Universities . More than 800 universities now allow students to apply without an SAT or ACT test score. For years, colleges have been using these tests to measure an applicant’s academic skills and art. But now more universities are becoming “test optional.” Students who apply to test-optional colleges can choose whether they want to include test scores in their applications or not. SATs/ACTs are strongly influenced exams against low-income students and colored students, at a time when equality in diversity was hard to gain. Some good students due to stress are bad test givers.George Washington University in Washington, D.C. is one of the best schools which adopts a test-optional admission policy for most of its applicants. It is the largest private university who dropped the test requirement.
Around more than 3,000 colleges and universities in America have its own admission procedure and requirements. For some colleges, test cards, scores are important. Other colleges are more interested in the applicant’s life experience, their individuality from other students,teacher recommendations, and community service.An another way to judge a student’s ability was High school GPA, or grade point average.
Generally, a strong curriculum is a need to students that prepares them for the extraordinary exams and college. Students till now have been in a classroom atmosphere,working under a kind of challenging coursework,giving tests in a different manner and presentations in class work projects. All these academic and extracurricular activities are different from those of the college environment and work. “Many US colleges and universities are not familiar with the globalised admission for students applying from secondary schools, their timely standardized test scores are considered to be a valuable tool which provides an inspiration to students with an insightful feeling of doing well.
Lastly, some college entrance exams as an idea are great, but in reality from time to time they are inaccurate too. The entrance exams create a pressure on students, there is a differentiation in the testing, and they are not really testing a student’s knowledge but only giving admission on the basis of their score cards. Less emphasis should be given on the tests and more importance should be given on what the students have actually learned and what are their intellectual qualities. It is an unfair method when a student doesn’t get accepted to a college based on the fact that their scores were not good enough.
