The ACT Problem

During this whole college application process, I have one main question: why on Earth do we still have the ACT/SAT?

Although it's true that no part of your college app can define you as a human being (not your grades, not your essay, not your letters of rec) the part that tells the least about you by far is your ACT score.

How do you recieve this one number? You sit in a room for four hours with no food, no water, no exercise, and you take a series of specifically structured multiple choice tests that are specifically engineered to be too long to finish within the time period. The test is designed to be stressful, miserable, and to make you rush to finish.

These four hours give you one number that supposedly gives people a good idea of how smart you are. But what about the other factors? What if you're incredibly bright but can't focus for periods that long? Many students are very smart in their schoolwork but can't manage to do well on tests, which doesn't reflect their intelligence at all. What if you didn't get a good night's sleep the night before? What if you just happened to be distracted by something in your life? All of these factors can have a severe impact on your ACT score, and unless you're willing to pay to take the test again (and again and again and again), that score will determine which colleges you can go to.

While there's more to your application than just your score, it's still a large factor. Many colleges have a minimum score for incoming applicants. If you screw up your test (that four hour test!) it can keep you from going to quite a few colleges you might truly be qualified for.

But it's far more than that. Students who study from the officially issued ACT/SAT books (costing $20-$30 a pop) are guaranteed to do better than students who don't. And students who pay to take the prep classes are guaranteed to do better than students who just study from the books. The ACT is constantly coming up with new materials and services that test takers can pay for to improve their performance on the test.

These tests are businesses. This is what many people tend to forget. These companies exist to make profits, and they are making HUGE profits off the backs of students desperate to get into college.

So why do colleges still even consider these scores when considering applicants? Why do we still let students in American be defined by one number they earned on one day of their life? Why do we still think that intelligence can be measured by filling in boxes and being able to sit still for four hours?