It is time. The students look at each other in fear; this is the test that could very well determine if their dream college accepts or rejects them. Their parents have been pressuring them for so long to do well on this test. And the students now look down at the question in front of them, thinking “When did we ever learn about the graphs of cosine functions?” or “I don’t remember what I learned about gerunds and infinitives!” and realizing that they are not nearly as bright as they thought they were.
But above all, they are asking themselves why in the world they have to take this stupid test.
Standardized testing has been said to be completely biased towards those who have “robotic” minds – the left-brained individuals, while the right-brained musicians and artists are stuck with 16s on their ACTs.
However, standardized testing is not meant to measure creativity. If a college wishes to know how creative an applicant is, they can ask for an essay, or ask for accomplishments or otherwise on the application. A standardized test is simply meant to look over your academic abilities as a whole. Though GPAs do accomplish this somewhat, a standardized test separates the slackers from the ones who try very hard to get the grades they do.
It should be noted, though, that standardized testing is not the tell-all of a student’s true academic abilities. There are many types of students who must take a little longer on a test to do well. Perhaps they feel pressured by timed tests. If someone with an IQ of 155 and 4.1 GPA gets a 23 on the ACT, there may be some discrepancy that needs to be noted.
This exception aside, standardized testing is a solid and objective way to test the academic abilities of a student. By giving a group of students questions to which they should know the answers as juniors in high school, it is letting the above-average students excel and the below-average students expose the truth to their colleges of choice. Though the tests do not...