The recent trend among colleges and universities has been to make high school admissions tests optional. These tests, primarily the SAT and ACT, have long been maligned as a poor way to determine college eligibility (at best) and highly biased (at worst). I would argue that these tests do serve a purpose, although differentiation may not be among the best applications.
The tests are often the target of criticism as being highly biased and subject to unfair advantages gained by wealthy families hiring expensive tutors (such as myself). My only question to these critics would be "isn't the entire systems biased"? Clearly gaining superior grades, outstanding extracurricular activities, and stellar recommendations all favor wealthy families with access to the best tutoring services (again, people like me), high level connections, and influence within the community.
The real value in these tests appears to be an effort to gauge the readiness of students for higher levels of study. When I started my tutoring business, I was shocked by the rudimentary level of most students. Many of these students were taking extremely challenging classes, such as AP Physics, Calculus BC, Honors Geometry, etc. Yet, most of these students were unable to solve simple math problems like finding the equation of a line given two points. I don't remember a single student who could identify the main use of a comma. These students had forgotten (or never learned) almost 100 percent of the material that had been supposedly taught since they started their education. How could that be?
The lack of retention of even basic math, science, or grammar topics was quite amazing to me. However, I had to remember why I started tutoring. I felt that I had achieved a reasonable level of academic success (on paper) yet I didn't really learn the material, especially as I progressed to higher level math, science, engineering, and finance classes. My grasp of algebra and lower level math was pretty decent, although I was amazed at the gaps in my knowledge as I started tutoring students in these subjects.
Herein lies the value of these college admission tests. They provide the harsh realization that students haven't really learned much from years of education. I would encourage you to ask your child some simple questions. What's in the Bill of Rights? What's the quadratic equation? What's the purpose of a comma? Make sure to look up the answers yourself first! The root cause of this poor retention, and our abysmal rankings worldwide, in math and science perhaps lies in the fact that we never give our children the opportunity to creatively apply the knowledge gained in school to any activity, e.g., sports, music, business, etc.
My main goal as a tutor is not only to educate students, but also to provide an avenue for creative thinking and a means to apply what has been lacking in our educational system. Getting back to the main point of this article, the main benefit of admission test seems to be the ability to point out the problems with our existing educational system. I would strongly encourage readers to check out my list of online classes as we tackle this challenge together.
Happy Holidays!
Eric Eisler
Founder, eseprep
301-272-7644
https://www.eseprep.org/
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