I still remember the day I called the Office of Enrollment Management when I was applying to the University a little over a year ago. I was wondering if international students majoring in mass communication needed to take the SAT or ACT. The second I heard it wasn’t required, I couldn’t help but throw my hands in the air because my life suddenly became less stressful.
It blows my mind that people still think human intelligence can be measured by a test during which you sit in a room for six to seven hours under enormous time pressure, filling in circles for the majority of the time. I understand that the ACT and SAT give universities an overview of how much a student knows about the main aspects of the education they’ve had so far, but does a GPA not do that? And does it not do a way better job because it’s the result of several tests the student takes throughout the year?
I guess not here in America, where a GPA is pretty much useless. You can basically lean back during your whole high school career if you know you’re good at standardized testing, because you’ll still get into a good college and receive scholarships based on your score. Standardized testing simply decides too much.
If you go to high school in northern or central Europe, your teachers will start talking about applying to a university at the beginning of senior year, but they could start talking about it even later because applying to universities is so easy. You go on a website where your high school has already created an account for you, log in and click on which universities you want to apply to and what you want to major in. Then you click “send,” and all of the universities you applied to will receive your GPA automatically at the beginning of the summer.
Your GPA decides everything. Europe has a 6-point GPA scale. In some countries a 1.0 is the best you can have. In others, it is a 6.0. Just like here in the U.S., the required GPA varies from university to university, but with a score between 1 and 2 (or 6 and 5 in some countries) you get accepted to most places. The universities then will look at your GPA on the website, and if yours is above the required score, you’re in.
I want to add that how you performed in high school is also not really the right way to go. You can have a crazy amount of volunteer hours or incredible experience in your field of major, but there’s no way to tell universities that. So volunteer work and experience doesn’t improve your application. That’s part of the reason why it’s easy to apply to universities.
But don’t get me wrong. This is still better than having to take the ACT or SAT, where a composite score can ruin your life. It simply isn’t right that an English or journalism major’s opportunity to receive scholarships or get accepted to their dream school disappears because they performed poorly on the math and science section of a standardized test. Writers don’t have to be good with numbers.
The fact that companies own standardized tests shows that a big part of it is making money. Not only do students pay about $80 to take the ACT, they also spend a good amount of money to prepare for it. High school students feel so pressured that they buy workbooks and even enroll in classes that are taught by certified professors. This is so typically American: seeing the opportunity of making money in something that is completely unnecessary.
How is it alright for good standardized test-takers to be accepted to honors colleges and receive scholarships while hard-working high school students who are poor standardized test takers are happy to just get accepted? Let’s stop this ridiculousness, America.
Markus Hüfner is a 19-year-old mass communication freshman from Kristiansand, Norway. You can reach him on Twitter @MHufner_TDR.