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Standardized Testing In Outliers

793 Words4 Pages

In a country that promotes the ideas of grit, innovation, resourcefulness, and growth, I find it curious that American universities are still using standardized tests as an indicator of future success in college. Although standardized tests are only one factor in admissions to many colleges, they should not be used at all because they do not accurately predict the success of students in higher educational environments. Instead of using the SAT and ACT, admissions officers should put more weight on written essays, cumulative high school grade point average, extracurriculars, and letters of recommendation when deciding admissions. Although some may argue that the SAT and ACT offer a way of ranking students without factoring in grade point average, their ability to predict the future success of college students has not been demonstrated. In a research study done by …show more content…

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, Gladwell discusses how kids from poorer areas start out at the same levels of proficiency as kids from upper class families, but the wealthier kids generally do better than the poorer kids on standardized tests down the road. Gladwell comes to the conclusion that the gap in performance on standardized tests is generally determined by how kids spend their summers. He found that the the poorer kids are left to play with friends in the summer, while the upper class families hire tutors and take their kids to museums. After about ten summers of accumulating advantage, the wealthier kids are more prepared to do well on the infamous college entrance exams. While the wealthier kids have been groomed for these tests since the start of their school careers, the kids from disadvantaged backgrounds are, once

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