Are the SAT and ACT Worth Student’s Time?

College admissions tests, such as the SAT and ACT, have played an important role for decades when it comes to who colleges and universities chose to admit and reject. The College Board, who administers the SAT, and ACT claim their tests are objective. Is that really the case? An article from the Washington Post states, “critics say SAT and ACT results follow a pattern of all standardized test scores: Kids from poor families do worse than kids with more money.” Wealthy families can provide more resources for their children to do better on these tests such as tutoring, schools with better resources, access to technology, and the list goes on. 

Sara Casey, a current high school senior, stated, “these standardized tests are not good at representing your academic achievements, and therefore should not be used to compare us to other students.” ACT rebuttals these thoughts by stating, “no student should have an unfair advantage over any other.” If that was the case then you would only be allowed to use resources that everyone had access to in order to study. For example, not every student has the resources that make tutoring available. That makes the exam no longer based on a student’s academic achievements, but is now dependent on the resources they have available to them.

For years, people have questioned the logic and rationality behind these exams. Now, during COVID, we have seen many schools go test optional for now. This just proves that we do not need the SAT or the ACT to distinguish who gets into one college and who doesn’t. If we can do without them for this year, we can do without them for the years to come.