Problems with SAT

Problems with the SAT

Nowadays, colleges and universities have been using the SAT to select their students who apply to them. According to College Board, the SAT is a test that measures students' abilities which they will use to be able to do well in universities or colleges. In addition, the SAT shows how well the students solve the problems and how well the education they have gotten. The SAT consists of ten sections which consist of one 25-minute essay section, two 25-minute and one 20-minute math problem sections, four 25-minute, one 20-minute, and one 10-minute English problem sections. Therefore, the total time to do all the sections is three hours and forty-five minutes ("SAT Reasoning Test").

The first SAT test was made to recruit armies in World War I. Later on, Carl Brigham, a Princeton University professor made the SAT used in universities or colleges. In 1938, the SAT was used for scholarship applications only. Then in 1942, the SAT was started to be used for accepting students until now ("A Brief History of the SAT").

Although the SAT seems like a good measure and is used by many colleges and universities, it is not a good way to measure a student's ability and should be abolished because it has some problems. The ideas that show the problems are the not-balance fact between black students and white students that have taken the SAT, the fact that shows that a student's parent's income affects a student's SAT score, the fact about the incorrectness of the SAT scores that some students took in October 2005, and about the score which does not measure someone's ability or future.

The SAT seems fair for every student, or even everyone; in fact, the average score between black people and white people has b...

... middle of paper ...

...for everybody, especially black people. Therefore, this can decrease an enrollment of black people in taking the SAT, and the SAT will seem biased. Third, the SAT scores can be incorrect (happened in October 2005), which means that the other tests, whose the scores are never incorrect, are better than the SAT. And the last, the SAT scores do not show people's futures. People can be successful even though they score low on their SATs. All in all, universities and colleges should not use the SAT to make a selection for their incoming students; they need another test which is fair for everybody. They also need to look at students' GPAs because GPA shows how well the students have done in high school. In other words, they also need to look at students' GPAs because students have done much more time and many more tests for their GPAs than they have done for their SATs.