https://nationaltestprep.org/how-standardized-testing-is-essential-to-promoting-equity/ Wed, 27 Mar 2024 18:51:35 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://nationaltestprep.org/how-standardized-testing-is-essential-to-promoting-equity/#comment-50 Sun, 24 Apr 2022 19:01:04 +0000 https://nationaltestprep.org/?p=4398#comment-50 The truth needs to be more widely acknowledged: standardized testing for admissions is vitally important. Without it, admissions officers are left with GPA (which has been inflated such that 70% of students at 4-year universities had A-averages in high school and is correlated with wealth) and then even worse measures (essays that can be highly edited or entirely written by others), demonstrated interest (which favors those who can fly around the country to different school), legacy (which favors those who tend to come from wealthy families and are then poised to directly perpetuate that privilege through favorable admissions), early admissions (which benefits those who do not have to rely upon financial aid offers), athletic recruitment (which dramatically favors the wealthy who have access to private coaches and can fly around the country to athletic showcases to compete), extracurricular activities (which the wealthy have more access to), etc, etc, etc. What no one can take away from a disadvantaged student, however, is the academic preparation that they can showcase with a standardized test. That puts them on a more level playing field with their more privileged peers than any other metric. With it, they can surpass the constraints of assumptions about the quality of their schooling based on zip code. With it, they can escape the constraints (essays, extracurricular activities, etc) of the privileges that the wealthy can pay for.

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