“The standardized tests that exist today were originally established to keep people OUT of college… in particular folks of color, women, and Jewish people,” explained Ms. Martin, the upper school college counselor. Despite this disturbing beginning and a controversial history, standardized tests like the SAT and ACT get taken by about 2.2 million students every year and have long played a consequential role in the college admissions process. That began to change this year due to the pandemic, and hopefully, these unforeseen changes will help colleges move toward a more equitable future.

The SAT has a shocking history. In the early 1900s, every college had its own entrance exam, and people had to travel to the schools and take them in-person. To standardize that process, the College Board commissioned a new test for all colleges to use. The head of the commission, Carl Brigham, modified a previous test he had co-created, the Army Alpha test, to make that original SAT. This is where everything went wrong. The Army Alpha already had its issues. Brigham created the test to give soldiers assignments based on skill instead of their wealth or class like in previous years. However, the Army Alpha just used biased and irrelevant questions to “scientifically” enforce the same order. For example, question #5 was “Topaz is usually a. Red b. Yellow c. Blue d. Green”. Knowledge about precious gemstones is not exactly relevant to military service, and similar questions seriously disadvantaged working class people, such as those who might have never seen a topaz. Not only did the basis for the SAT initially favor the wealthy, but its creator was a vocal antisemite and white supremacist who skewed his tests to confirm his own biases. Brigham wrote a book titled A Study of American Intelligence in which he explained how his tests would prove all of his theories about white people’s superiority.

The College Board has edited the SAT since then, and despite their disturbing origins, standardized tests do have some positive aspects for colleges today. For example, since grades are subjective and can vary based on the specific teacher or difficulty of the school, making all juniors and seniors take the same test aims to offer an objective measurement of education. Colleges also use them to award scholarships, gauge academic preparedness, and essentially make the admissions process easier for colleges that have to look at thousands of applicants. 

However, the inequality that standardized tests enforce today outweighs these benefits for colleges. In 2015, parents spent about 13.1 billion dollars on test prep for their children. Even students like Caroline Hayter ‘22 who have access to these resources can acknowledge that “Today’s standardized test scores are largely determined by financial access to preparation materials such as tutors, courses, and books.” Scoring data from the college board shows a clear correlation between family income and test scores. It is, in fact, one of the only correlations these tests demonstrate. Ms. Martin explained that the tests actually predict very little. They do not predict intelligence, freshman year English class, or GPA. They only show a teenager’s ability to take a test, their parents’ education, and their socioeconomic background. Some students face more than the money disadvantage. Just like the Army Alpha assumed that everyone knew facts about precious gemstones, recent SATs still ask questions with cultural expressions from predominantly white society. As a result, just growing up around white people and having the test created by white people gives some students a leg up. Even the ACT, designed to be more equitable than the SAT, has a significant racial score gap. In recent years, only about 10% of Black students passed three or more ACT benchmarks, while 50% of white students and 60% of Asian students did. 

Since most four-year colleges required these test scores, the college guidance counselors at WFS have always reluctantly suggested that students take these standardized tests but not stress over them. Ms. Martin explained, “We have to provide all options and opportunities to our students… but we only recommend that they do test prep if it helps them and is worth their while.” Studying for these exams notoriously puts a lot of stress on teenagers just trying to get into their choice of college, so the college office at Friends does its best to remind students that they are “more than a test score” and the extra work is “worth it only for certain students with certain colleges.”

Thankfully, a few good things have come from this year-long pandemic. About two in three colleges and universities went test-optional or test-blind this year since, as Ms. Martin said, “any given test has been canceled six times”.  Now, top-tier colleges cannot ignore the benefits of removing the standardized testing requirement. Private institutions saw a 29% increase in applicants and public colleges 11%. Colleges not only received more applications, but increased diversity among applicants led to more students of color getting accepted. Furthermore, those students who got accepted without ever submitting a test score were just as successful, if not more so, than those who did submit. Like many issues in this country, Covid-19 brought to light an obvious problem in America’s education system. Standardized tests were exposed for what they are: a pseudo-scientific way to reject the students that colleges did not want anyway. 

Despite their stated intent of equalizing college admissions, in reality, they have the opposite effect. It should surprise no one that even after going through changes, a test created by a bigot has continued to fulfill its original, exclusionary intent. However, the future looks bright since the pandemic unearthed the real usefulness of these tests. As senior Felicia Frio ‘21 shared, “Colleges should continue down this path as they can already gauge so much about a student from their essays, recommendations, and transcript, that there is no need for a number score of a standardized test to determine a students future.”