I can think of one organization in particular who would greatly disagree with this argument, colleges. This is for the simple reason that there are standards in higher education. It is expected that, upon entering this level, one has the necessary skills to do well. It is for this reason why the ACT and SAT exist. If Ivy League universities, such as Harvard or Yale, were to let anyone who wanted to go to these schools do so, they would not be Ivy League anymore. Instead, they would have a bunch of students who thought they could handle the stress and workload of a prestigious university, who ended up not being able to. That is where Kramer’s first point of, “What benefits does the ACT or SAT give the average student and are they really benefits?” comes into effect. The benefit for the student is that they will not be wasting time and hard earned money in order to attend a university that they were not cut out for. So, these tests act as a sort of litmus test to show the student where he or she might want to consider furthering his or her education. …show more content…
Colleges have reputations, plain and simple. So, to stick to the previous example, how would the Ivy League’s reputation change if it just disregarded test scores? The answer, they would be just like any other college, or worse, academic-wise. The reason why colleges look at the ACT and SAT results is to gauge the student’s ability to succeed. While it is true that GPAs are probably a better representation of a student’s ability, grades are not infallible. What if the student took four hours of gym and got A’s in all of them? However, a test, especially a standardized one, is less likely to error. While some people may claim to be “bad test takers,” more often than not, the people with the high GPAs score high on test like these. So, colleges look to these scores for a rough estimate of how capable the student