I was thinking the same thing. The SAT’s are the only purely objective messurement. GPA’s can be tinkered with. Letters of recommendation can be complete fiction. It seems that the SAT’s or a standardized objectively graded national test is the only way.
I’m not sure what you know of the current college admissions process. In my bad old days, it was GPA, letters of recommendation and SAT. Today it’s that PLUS AP tests (subject specific) and SAT II tests (again subject specific). It’s definitely NOT the same as (ulp, dating myself here) the 1970s.
EXACTLY and WHY many want to get rid of them.
They don’t want OBJECTIVE measurement. They either didn’t work hard or afraid of not comparing well to others.
I think the main problem with SATs is the weight which colleges give them.. I teach 12th grade English and have seen students get 1300 on the SAT, yet I know that they can’t put two sentences together AND they don’t have the work ethic to get into school. What ends up happening 9 times out of 10 is that they get accepted based solely on their SAT (while others with higher motivation and less test-taking skill do not) and flunk out in a semester. SATs are okay, but too many colleges put SO much emphasis on them to the exclusion of other criteria that they deny better candidates. Of course, they don’t care because they get the parent’s money for the first year anyway.
Murray in is his article is saying that given that the SAT I and the SAT II Subject Matter tests have the same predictive ability for freshman grades, we should get rid of the SAT I and rely solely on the SAT II, which tests students on various subjects (Biology, History, English Lit, Writing, etc.). He is arguing that the SAT I is seen as an intelligence test, and both low scorers and high scorers put too much lifelong emphasis on the results. Both SATs are objective, national tests, and many colleges already require that applicants take 3-4 SAT IIs.