Preview

The Pros And Cons Of The SAT

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
517 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Pros And Cons Of The SAT
In 1926 the SAT also known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test was adapted from and Army IQ test and administered as a college admissions test. The test didn't catch on until 1933 when the president of Harvard started using the test to assess scholarship applicants because he believed it was an effective measurement of intellectual potential. The other standardized college admissions tests in the US is the ACT. This originally stood for American College Testing. However, in 1996 the official organization name was shortened to only ACT. a professor at the University of Iowa named Everett Franklin Lindquist developed the ACT as an alternative for the SAT, in 1959. The difference between the SAT and the ACT is that the ACT, unlike the SAT, wouldn’t …show more content…
However, the average SAT scores expected from colleges is 1000. The minimum score for the ACT is a 20. Colleges require these scores because SAT and ACT scores help colleges deracinate you and other students from different places all over the planet. The high someone scores the most likely like are to attend many schools nationwide. Even though, the minimum score for the ACT is a 20 and the minimum score for the SAT is 1000 never aim for the lowest. Everyone should go above and beyond because more opportunities are open from them. The scores show your strengths and readiness for college work. But remember, scores are just one part of your college application, along with grades, and recommendations.

Some benefits of high scores may include scholarships. Some colleges use your test scores, alone or in combination with other characteristics and achievements, to award their funds. Some colleges may even automatically award you a scholarship if you earn a certain score. Another benefit may be competition. Other students nationwide are also applying for some college as you. When someone score is better than others that put them ahead of them in academic. Aminstaters also have to take a look at the volunteer experiences, after school activities, references but your test scores can allow you to be

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Junior and senior years of high school are the most stressful time for students when you combined advanced classes, sports, and other extracurriculars. While trying to maintain a high collegiate level GPA, students must also deal with the stress of taking standardized tests, specifically the ACT and SAT. Many students will have to take both exams multiple times, not only to complete college applications but to ensure they score high enough to meet that college's requirements. Supporters believe that standardized tests are useful when determining a student's intellectual and academic level, and I have found that looking at this view to be eye-opening. Students, including myself, respect that supporters want students to do their best and…

    • 937 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    When going to school students are supposed to learn based off a curriculum, but instead they are learning based off a test. These test are meant to help students, but instead they are hurting them. Standardized test requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from common bank of questions, in the same way. Also they are scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students. Each state has a different name for their standardized test, for Virginia they call theirs the Standards Of Learning, SOL’s. These test are neither fair nor objective, puts pressure on the students, and it cuts off time in the school year.…

    • 1488 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Berklee

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages

    SAT/ACT scores are not required for admission. There are no specific minimum cut-off grade point averages (GPA), college board scores, or class ranks in order to be considered for acceptance. However, the board of admissions (BOA) prefers grades of C+ and higher in English, math, history, and science.…

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since being implemented into school curriculum more than fifty years ago, standardized testing has become the most prevalent form of comparing and ranking students across the nation and around the globe. Although standardized testing occurs in the majority of first-world countries around the world, The United States has received the brunt of public criticism for their overuse and excessive difficulty of the tests. Most American students begin state-wide or nation-wide assessments in elementary school and continue all the way through junior high and high school, culminating with perhaps two of the most well-known standardized tests, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the American College Testing (ACT). The tests can cause severe stress and…

    • 230 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abolish Sat

    • 427 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Secondly, Murray announces that the meaning of SAT has changed. As Murray states “Originally, the point of the SAT-whose initials, after all, stood for Scholastic Aptitude Test” and “College Board abandoned aptitude altogether and changed the name of the SAT to “Scholastic Assessment Test,” the meaning has changed even though the initials are still “SAT.” Aptitude means “inherent ability,” but in the 1960s, the concept of aptitude has changed because the “temper of the times be interpreted as the fault of the tests that produced them.” It showed ethic and class differences, and it was favored of upper-middle-class white kids, which cannot be a good test.…

    • 427 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Before even getting to the components of the test, first lets take into account the fact that a lot of people out there do not have enough money for tutors or books who really need them for preparation. A lot of other people hire tutors or get a lot of books to prepare them well and therefore the preparation itself just went through an unfair process. Secondly, the test is timed and we all work at different paces. There are those of us who can read really fast and get all the information down fast but there are those of us who cant read as fast but can still get down all the information very well. There are those of us who can quickly think about how to format an essay but there are those of us who need more time are can still write a great essay. Therefore, the fact that it is timed definitely factors in to not being able to truly indicate how smart the student really is. The SAT is also very culturally biased in the way that there are many people out there who come to the United States late in their school career and barely know any English and are all of a sudden expected to have a great English vocabulary and great English reading skills just to have a chance to go to college. Once again, another reason the SAT does not truly determine the intelligence of the…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Abolishing the SATs

    • 1068 Words
    • 3 Pages

    It is quite apparent that education is a major key to success, however, is it exactly a fair shot when we are determined of that by a standardized test? As if we all are intelligent in the same type of ways? Human beings are bright, brilliant creatures. A part of what makes us so interesting is all the different strengths we have, because we are not all the same. SAT scores are not a necessary part of the college acceptance process.…

    • 1068 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Abolish the SAT

    • 406 Words
    • 2 Pages

    According to Murray, the aptitude tests, along with GPAs, tell just as much, making the SAT pointless. Admissions departments look at all the factors of a student before admitting to determine how well they will succeed in college. The GPA of students shows just as much as the SAT scores, and the aptitude tests also show the success rate of students just as much. So, if a student goes to a poor school but has a hunger for learning, they can score high on an aptitude test simply by seeking the information for themselves, and most likely these same students will have high GPAs, so the SAT scores do not show anything more to the admissions people, so why take the SAT at all.…

    • 406 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Standardized testing has been part of American history since the 1800’s. In Hot Topics Carla Mooney says, "In the United States school reforms Horace Mann and Samuel Gridley Howe introduced standardized testing in Boston public schools in the mid - 1800s. The men designed the new tests to provide a standard to judge and compare the performance of each school and to gather objective information about the equality of teachers" ( Mooney 11-12).In the mid - 1800s Horace Mann and Samuel Gridley Howe brought standardized testing to Boston. The tests were created to make a standard and compare schools and the quality of teachers.Standardized testing has been in America for about 200 years and were designed to compare students and teachers. In…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    SAT Testing Fair Essay

    • 2455 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is a test designed for students of any age, but draws a large amount of juniors and seniors in high school. This test measures students’ skills in reading, writing and mathematics. The test is out of 2400 points, 800 points from reading, 800 from writing, and 800 from mathematics. If good test scores come from wealth, then the most important issue to consider is, the poorest families having a disadvantage because they cannot afford private elite tutoring to increase their kids score. Many sources say this elite tutoring is a huge problem, but other sources say the tutoring is not what gets you a high score. This is a nationwide test that is often used to help students’ chances…

    • 2455 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The SAT is a similar test that test a student’s academic skills used for admission to United States’ colleges. Neither the SAT nor the ACT should be a requirement, because they do not test a person’s intelligence, but test how well students can study, and take tests. The SAT and ACT takes up a lot of time of a student’s senior year. The year that they are supposed to enjoy the most because after they graduate, they have officially entered the real world.…

    • 2024 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The American College Test and Scholastic Assessment Test, commonly known as the ACT and SAT, are both standardized tests used to determine a student's academic knowledge and skills in order to identify which level of colleges and universities they can handle. The ACT Inc. calls their test an indicator of "college and career readiness" and college boards trust their numbers to reflect just that. Although it is known that college admission boards take into consideration many other factors, such as grade point average, extracurricular involvement and class rank when accepting and rejecting applicants, it in inevitable that students are still turned down because their standardized tests reflect that they are not "ready." As a result, high schools all over the nation put great emphasis on these college admissions tests that are administered nationwide to each high school junior. It is true that standardized testing is a method for colleges to rank and then select students by expressing each student's capability as a number. This number is useful because otherwise it would be very difficult to rank such a diverse group of people, each with his or her own strengths and achievements in different fields. Although this solves the problem of having to weigh the significance and precedence of each individual's past…

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    SAT Persuasive Essay

    • 1357 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Thousands of high school students spend the spring semester of their junior year stressing and studying for one of the most important tests that will get them into college, the SAT. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), created in 1920, is used to select each year's incoming freshman class.(source ) The “standardized test” is regarded as the test that will predict how students do in college. Therefore, colleges use students SAT score as the deciding factor on whether they are accepted into their dream school or denied due to not reaching the “benchmark.” Many strongly stand by the SAT as they believe it is the test that provides students “equal footing” ( Source) and allows them to demonstrate what they have learned from their high school experience. However,…

    • 1357 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    SAT testing is not an appropriate method of measuring a student’s overall intelligence. This popular standardized test is offered in over 176 countries, including the United States. The SATs can be the deciding factor of college acceptance, making the exam itself too influential on a student’s future. Additionally, the test has been taken advantage of numerous times for higher scores. The legitimacy of the SATs is also questioned with the issue of income inequality. Most students in the 21st century are striving to achieve acceptance into elite colleges; henceforth, a single exam having the power to change one’s future is irrational. Despite these inconsistencies, some argue the SATs provide a cornerstone for the strengths and weaknesses of a student that can be compared to…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The first standardized test was developed in France nearly 100 years ago by a psychologist named Alfred Binet. Binet’s test focused on language skills, judgment, comprehension, reasoning and memory, and was used to determine which students would succeed in regular classes and which needed special attention (Lefton). Binet’s test was successful in the Parisian school system and generated a lot of interest in America. An American psychologist named Lewis Terman translated Binet’s test into English and created the intelligence quotient (IQ) test which remains in use today. (“Lewis Terman and IQ”). Standardized tests have evolved over the years and are used to determine…

    • 1312 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays