Specialized High School Admissions Essay

549 Words3 Pages

The specialized high school admissions test (SHSAT) has been surrounded by a controversy regarding the admissions process. Many people believe that the process discriminates towards lower class students and should include other things such as the G.P.A, add essays, and more. It is better to keep the process as it is. It is not discriminatory towards lower class students because there are free preparation programs provided in school for the SHSAT. It is the student's choice whether to enroll or not. In addition, given in schools are a free SHSAT prepping book which allows students to know more about the SHSAT and how the process works, in that there are two practice test students can take. They can check their answers and explanations of how to do the questions at the end of the book. Students can study with this handbook given out for free. If it was not given to some students because of a specific reason all the previous hand books are available at this site: http://testprepshsat.com/. This site popped up by searching shsat free online practice test in Google. Since some students may not have a computer they can visit any New York Public …show more content…

Immigrants may have not understood English enough to write an essay that can match up with Native speakers, however with the test they do not need to write essays, they need a certain point of understanding of English to pass the test. It is not like they are not smart, it is just that their first language is not English unlike others. Immigrants may not have the grades specialized high schools are expecting because they are new to the country. Furthermore, the G.P.A standard for each school is not same. So some students may not get in because their G.P.A is too low because of the school standards whereas the opposite can also happen. Adding essays and G.P.A will make the test more discriminatory towards