ACT Equals College Worth? I Don’t Think So Op-Ed

Over the summer, my older sister who had just finished her junior year of high school enrolled in an ACT test prep course to learn some techniques to improve her scores. The ACT is a standardized college admissions test which all high school students in the state of Illinois are required to take in order to graduate from high school. It is similar to the SAT which is more commonly taken on the east and west coasts. These are very long and mentally draining tests which typically take three to four hours. My sister took two ACTs before she began the class. In the end, my parents decided to invest in her scores by paying for the class.

Because I am a junior and I am hearing some of my friends talk about the classes or tutoring which their parents are paying for in order to prepare for the test, I began to think about the inequity these classes, books, and tutors are creating in society. The economic interests that test prep companies have in these tests give the upper hand to the wealthier classes of society by having students and their families ultimately buy their scores.

There is a large difference in the number of students who get accepted into top universities from the lower classes versus the upper classes. According to The Atlantic, of all of the students who are accepted into the top universities in the world, only fourteen percent are from the lower fifty percent of income distribution. That means that the other eighty six percent of students who attend these universities are from the upper fifty percent of income distribution. They often have the finances available to pay for an ACT
or SAT prep course.

On a micro level, if a family of lesser means wanted to play the ACT prep game to compete with a wealthier family for spots in these universities, it could create a lot of
hardships for that family, which would make it even harder to afford the colleges which they do get into, despite the financial aid being offered. This system undermines one of the great American values of equality of opportunity by giving fewer college opportunities to equally deserving people of lower socioeconomic class.

All of the money poured into these tests only heightens the importance of the overrated ACT and SAT. These tests are somewhat able to predict a student’s college readiness, but so many other factors contribute to how a student does on a test such as
atmosphere, anxiety, and preparation. All students are different. Some students work slower than others as well, but that does not mean that they are not as ready for college as the student who works faster. And on these tests, students are penalized for their slower speed because only thirty minutes to an hour is given for each section.

Perhaps one way to get rid of the division between class and acceptance to top schools is to eliminate the ACT and SAT all together. According to an NPR report from February, 2014, all of the students who applied to test optional schools and did not submit their scores did just as well in college as the students who chose to submit their scores to their schools. This information means that schools should really put more emphasis on a student’s grades from high school rather than test scores which are seemingly meaningless. Test prep courses which a person can pay for do not truly recognize the intelligence and college worth of an individual. These tests should not be a deciding factor because they do not give an accurate picture of a student’s intelligence and the people who sell these courses are merely exploiting and increasing pressure on high school students to achieve high scores on the exam.