I began taking standardized tests for fun. I would take them in the morning with a cup of coffee, the way other people do crosswords. I found a hidden structure to standardized tests that makes them quite easy. And hilarious. I was obsessive, taking every GMAT, LSAT, SAT, and GRE that had ever been published. I took an MCAT once just for laughs. I don鈥檛 know any science, but I did well enough that I could have gotten into medical school.
My friends were unsupportive. They鈥檇 pick fights with me about the fairness of admissions testing. One even suggested that I join the test-prep industry. And so I did.
People always ask me whether I think standardized tests actually measure anything. I used to give them nerdy statistical answers about scoring validity and concordance tables, often with the enthusiasm a computer programmer has for an 鈥淴-Files鈥� marathon or a new flavor of ramen noodles. Eventually, though, I realized that what these people want to hear is this: 鈥淪tandardized tests combine the diagnostic efficiency of a banana-republic health-care system with the personal touch of the airport immigration line.鈥� It helps to throw in a reference to the Nazis for good measure.
Standardized tests are very effective predictors of academic success in college or graduate school. That's a fact of statistics, whether we like it or not."
The reality is that standardized tests are very effective predictors of academic success in college or graduate school. That鈥檚 a fact of statistics, whether we like it or not. It鈥檚 also just an average, and you may be an exception one way or the other. That鈥檚 why standardized tests are only part of the application process, and are never (or should never be) the most important part.
Probably the most frequent complaint I hear is, 鈥淚 worked really hard and got good grades, but I just don鈥檛 do well on those tests.鈥� But if standardized tests perfectly correlated with your current academic transcript, they would be utterly useless. And for every hard-working kid who struggles with the test, there鈥檚 another kid who hasn鈥檛 yet gotten it together in school but will with a little more maturity. The test is designed not to penalize the former but to identify the latter.
Another pop-psychology protest is that standardized tests are ipso facto biased against minorities, since African-Americans and Hispanics on average underperform the mean. This argument is about as logical as divorcing your spouse upon reading that most billionaires are single. Other minority groups perform at or above the mean, so the issue isn鈥檛 ethnic identity. And it isn鈥檛 the tests; every question is now statistically vetted to eliminate any cultural bias. The failure is in society itself. Americans spend more than anyone else on public school education, but we spend it irrationally and extremely unevenly. Been to any inner-city schools recently? I have. It鈥檚 a miracle the scoring decrement isn鈥檛 even greater for the minority students who predominantly populate them. In fact, standardized tests have historically been the deserving minority candidate鈥檚 best friend, giving admissions officers hard data to help overcome even the most subtle perceptual biases.
Yet a growing number of colleges say standardized tests don鈥檛 measure anything and are making the SAT voluntary. Some of these schools use intellectually dishonest arguments like 鈥渉igh school grades are a better predictor of college performance.鈥� That鈥檚 true, but high school grades combined with SAT scores are a better predictor still. So why not use them? After all, getting more information can鈥檛 possibly hurt鈥攃an it?
My suspicion is that schools making the SAT voluntary are doing so for affirmative action purposes. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly narrowed the allowable use of affirmative action in university admissions. Shortly thereafter, admissions rates across the country declined for Hispanics and African-Americans. Since these groups historically underperform the mean, SAT scores tend to be a mildly deflationary force on their overall admissions rates.
The ivory-tower solution? Drop the test so that affirmative action admissions are easier to justify. And, wherever possible, shoot the messenger. It鈥檚 come full circle: The same people who once demanded standardized tests in order to keep minorities out, now attack the tests so they can let more minority candidates in.
