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The importance of college life
Why college life is important
Why college life is important
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The ACT test with writing is something that many high school seniors across the country have to take to be accepted into a college. It is meant to test students on what they learned in high school. The test also has an optional writing part that requires students to write an essay at the end. It is meant to test students to see if they are writing on a high enough to do well in college. All students should be required to take the ACT test with writing because it shows whether or not they are on a high enough level for college writing, they can save money by earning scholarships and they will be put in a writing class that is not too difficult for them.
Being prepared for college courses is very important. Getting off to a positive start
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This would provide motivation for students to study hard and to take the test seriously. If you score high enough on the ACT different colleges will award out sums of scholarship money depending on how high the score is. This taking the ACT with writing even more of a good reason. Saving or having extra money can be crucial for some college students. That extra money can be used for books or even a laptop.
The ACT is also able to see how much knowledge they have retained and test them on it. It is a good way to see if a student is prepared enough for college classes. It can gauge what level courses the student should be placed in for them to succeed. That will help them get the proper classes they need. It was also help them start off freshman year with good grades. Taking this test will give students an idea on what they will need to work on and study for before they get to college.
In conclusion the ACT test should have to be taken by all students before they start college. It will help them learn what they have to work on before they actually start classes. They can earn scholarships from getting a high score the test. Also it will help the college decide what classes to put the student in. Overall taking the ACT test is a great choice and should be mandatory for all students before
... a tedious process, but the change can have immense, positive effects for the future college student. The ACT and SAT that supposedly measure a student's learning potential through multiple-choice questions should be replaced by a test of a student's desire to learn determined through the analysis of essays, recommendation letters, and school or community involvement. This change can result in a more academically motivated freshman class. Standardized testing in its current form does not accurately measure most students' learning potential. It does not allow for diversity and creates a huge hurdle for many potential academic achievers. An adjustment to a diverse, open testing format of the ACT or SAT and a stress on the student's other academic accomplishments can accurately measure the student's desire to learn, therefore measuring the student's learning potential.
Thousands of students around the country and around the world will be preparing for the SAT and ACT tests while trying to maintain a high GPA. These tests will potentially have a significant impact on students' lives. Some will be taking these tests for the second or even third time to get that 1500 out of 1600 or that 33 out of 36, that they long desire. These flawed tests are not truly able to measure how well students will perform in college as they are supposedly used to predict. A single test that students have to wake up for at six, seven in the morning on a Saturday and travel to some random location to take a difficult test should not impact the student's chance of getting into college, let alone predict how well they will do in college.
...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.
It is difficult for certain population groups to do well on them and they reward “in the box” type thinking. However, they are not without their purposes in the admissions process. It can be complicated to compare grades in classes and GPA’s of students in different high schools because each course’s difficultly level varies. As the editorial board of the Washington Post argued, “No college can possibly know what an A-minus or a B-plus means in each of the thousand high schools their applicants attend” (“Getting Rid of SAT and ACT Testing Is a Mistake”). Basically, it is impossible to compare a student from California that gets an A in Geometry to a student from Virginia that gets a B in Geometry. Curriculum is different, teachers grade differently, and high schools have ways of inflating grades for their own benefit. This is where the importance of standardization comes in with standardized tests. Test like the SAT and the ACT, while not perfect, give admissions offices a baseline evaluator to compare students on. Without standardized test, students cannot be analyzed on equal footing. The danger in standardized tests is realized when schools assign too much value to a single score. It is vital that tests scores are used as what they are: a measure of student intelligence, but also just a number. Standardized tests are necessary in the college admissions process but cannot be the sole reason for acceptance or denial. Even the College Board, administer of the SAT, argues that test scores are best used when viewed in union with grades and extracurricular activities (Juric). If admissions offices are informed about the restrictions and imperfections associated with the SAT and ACT, especially the biases that appear against students from low income families, then test scores can be used
...alified applicants, increase the quality of the freshman class and increase diversity in the freshman class. In 2013, one-fourth of the applications received students did not submit test score which means that 4,000 of these applicants would not have applied if it weren’t for that fact Ithaca was not requiring them. For some students, test scores “conceal more than they reveal.”(us news) Like Ithaca College and American university, many of the other colleges that became optional in terms of test scores noticed the same outcomes. One is that diversity remarkably increased in terms of geography, ethnicity and socioeconomic background. Another is that test sores don’t really matter because the ones that submitted scores and the ones that didn’t have no difference in freshman GPA or in drop-out rates.
By definition, a test is a given short written or oral examination to determine a person’s proficiency or knowledge in a specific subject, and it seems that recently standardized tests have been lacking in regards to the true definition. Standardized testing is speculated to have its roots in seventh century China, where they would administer a test on Confucian era philosophy and poetry as a selection process for civil service, this form of testing has evolved into the tests we know today as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the American College Testing (ACT). Today too many students are depressed and anxious from education related stress, the added mental strain of a mandatory test that sometimes even determines whether or not that student goes to college seems cynical and over the top. Standardized tests should be reformed to judge a students ability to retain knowledge and skills long term and steer educators away from solely teaching students how to pass the test.
Evidence: The ACT tests, or the American College Test, is defined as “a standardized test to determine a high school graduate’s preparation for college-level work.” (foreignborn.com)
Stricter standards and increased testing are better preparing students for college, which is definitely an advantage. Also, physicians, lawyers, pilots, and jobs as such, all take standardized test to ensure they have the necessary knowledge of their professions, which I can agree that it is a good idea. Even though I believe standardized test cause much stress to the teachers, others believe it is a guidance for teachers to determine what they should be teaching the students. The test also allows students located in various schools, districts, and even states to be compared and approved by parents because it gives parents a good idea of how their children are doing compared to students across the country and
The SAT and ACT are the two main tests that students are taking for their entry into college. Should the SAT and ACT count for admissions into college? Personally, I don’t think they should. These two tests can kill someone’s dreams of going to the college they’ve been wanting since they were little. The SAT and ACT are unfair, racist, and they don’t really show anything except how fast someone can work under pressure. The SAT and ACT shouldn’t be requirements for college admissions because they don’t give a true meaning of what someone really knows.
The ACT is composed of four tests: English, mathematics, social studies, and natural sciences. The ACT takes approximately 3 hours and 25 minutes in total. The ACT is divided into four multiple choice sections. The English, mathematics, and reading tests have subscores which can range from 1-18. Composite test scores can range from a 1-36. The composite score is the average of all four tests. Students can also take an optional writing section. The writing portion consists of a writing score ranging from 2-12, a combined reading/writing score ranging from 1-36, and 1-4 comments on the essay from the essay scores. On the ACT, each question answered correctly is worth one point. Unlike the SAT, there are no penalties for incorrect answers on the multiple-choice portion of the test. This means that students can answer all questions on the multiple-choice portion of the test without suffering a decreased score for incorrect answers. The English portion of the ACT is a 45-minute test covering usage/mechanics and rhetorical skills. The 75 question test is composed of five passages with various sections underlined on one side of the page and options to correct the underlined problem on the other side. Issues addressed in this test include commas, apostrophes, modifiers (misplaced/dangling), colons, fragments/run-ons, clarity and
According to Herbert J. Walberg, author of “Standardized Tests Effectively Measure Student Achievement,” states that the tests fairly and comprehensively measure student performance. Students who study for the tests would obviously do a much better job than a student who spent their time watching television or playing on an electronic device. Research and experience show that standardized tests are generally good at measuring students’ knowledge, skills, and understanding because they are objective, fair, efficient, and comprehensive. Jeffrey Penn, author of “Standardized Tests Measures College Success,” says that the tests are more reliable for predicting college success than just a student’s high school grades. Many students have the “I don’t care about high school attitude” so they do not complete their assigned homework and they do not have a positive look towards school in general. That could be a major factor of having students take an actual standardized test in order for admission into the college of their choice, and having the hopes that students study and take this test seriously; however the test in general is an inaccurate representation of students altogether because of the restricted time limit they have to complete it, the little material that they are actually tested over, and the idea that many people are getting rid of the fact to use the scores and GPA for requirements for college and in the work
They force students to develop proper study and work ethics, as they must develop proper strategies for understanding and analyzing large amount of information. This can assist the students in the real world, as proper work ethics are essential for a person who has a job and is working, as many will need to understand the logistics and processes that are happening in their project and company. Testing provides students with a valuable way to set students apart from their high school. Recent exams, such as the SAT and the ACT, “ give students the chance to show that, even if their high school didn’t offer a large number of Advanced Placement courses or extracurricular activities, they’re still bright and motivated students with a lot of potential”
It is easy to see how colleges find standardized tests necessary for acceptance into their institutions. The SAT and ACT do in fact serve as a “metric for learning” (Nixon 2). Standardized tests provide benchmarks of learning for educators and parents, since every student takes the same exact test. The problem arises however, when we consider that every student is not exactly the same. As quoted by Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” College, unlike high school, is unique because not everyone is required to take the same exact classes to graduate. Thus, the claim of opposers rests solely upon the questionable assumption that everyone
I should receive a passing grade in this class because I can write now. Not just an exaggeration, but after another semester of English I finally feel confident that can write. Three of the reasons behind my confidence is I learned, I experienced and best of all I repeated. These three values helped prepare me for what is in store in English 1302 and here is why.
On the ACT, students need to have reading, math, science, English, and writing skills. Though the skills would not be completely taken away from school, by not having to take classes that prepare students for these standardized tests, it would take away stress from students and teachers. Even though classes could be added to assist with real world skills, it may only need to be one class each year, then college would pick up where high school left off. This system would provide students with necessary life skills with less