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It’s a reasonable question. Imagine you’re a student who has a very testeraserstrong GPA that has taken years of discipline and hard work, an impeccable resume of extracurricular activities that includes real leadership in significant campus organizations and a deep desire to attend a top university to pursue an education that will allow you to pursue a great career and generally become an educated person. The only problem, however, is that your stellar GPA and resume is accompanied by a very mediocre test prep score.

A lot of universities have an official position that goes something like “SAT and ACT scores are only part of the equation, and we consider a student’s entire application.” While this is probably actually true for a lot of schools, the truth is that a bad — or in the case of top universities, even mediocre — test score can be an absolute dealbreaker. No GPA is good enough to overcome a bad enough test score in many situations.

As the bright, hardworking student that you are, you are probably wondering:

What is the purpose of standardized tests?

To many students, they seem like unnecessary, stupid hoops that must be jumped through. At Test Geek, we mostly agree! But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some good intention behind them, and I’m going to hopefully offer some insight into what those intentions are.

When a college is evaluating a student, the college is interested in knowing several things about that student. It is interested in knowing what that student’s work ethic is, what their academic potential is and what special attributes and skills that student will bring to their campus. It really isn’t so different from the NFL doing its research and investigation into its prospects at the NFL combine. At the combine, athletes run for time, lift, do various drills for time and go through interviews. Looking at what that player has done in college isn’t always enough of a predictor for how that player might do in the NFL, so additional tests are introduced to measure factors that might not be captured on game film from college.

Here’s where test prep enters the picture. A GPA often indicates that a student has a good work ethic and can apply himself or herself well enough to academics to do well. It doesn’t always speak, however, to a student’s reasoning ability or top-level potential. The idea behind standardized tests was that they would test students on information they should all be familiar with in ways that would require creativity, novel thinking and good critical reasoning. It should, so the reasoning went, offer insight into potential that isn’t captured in GPA.

In my opinion, test makers have succeeded in some ways and failed in others. Standardized tests undoubtedly test critical reasoning skills in ways that high school curriculum does not. Many students who are great high school students struggle with standardized tests for this very reason, and some students who are very mediocre high school students are able to do quite well on standardized tests because they possess excellent reasoning skills. In some sense, this is a success for test makers: standardized tests do in fact measure something high school curriculum does not.

It’s not as clear, however, that what is measured is as important for college success as some might believe. There is some amount of correlation between standardized test scores and college success, but it isn’t an overwhelming amount of correlation. My personal opinion is that standardized tests are primarily useful for identifying students who have great potential but, for whatever reason, underperformed in high school. Going back to the NFL combine example, imagine a player who might have had injuries or didn’t fit in well in the system he played in during college. However, if this player shows up to the combine and runs faster than everyone else, lifts more than anyone else and gives really impressive interviews, teams might give him a second look. Sometimes standardized tests can do the same thing, helping schools find really bright students who might have underperformed previously.

There is great news for good students who aren’t doing well on the SAT and ACT, though: test prep can produce massive score jumps! Most of my favorite students have been great high school students who weren’t doing well on standardized tests. I really like these students because they tend to have great work ethics, and it’s easy to see that tutoring is playing a big role in helping a kid with big-time potential get to the next step.

While it’s probably frustrating for students who have spent years building a great GPA to be confronted with the challenge of a low SAT or ACT score, this challenge can be overcome. What you are scoring today does not have to be what you score tomorrow. SAT and ACT scores are much more like running ability than height: some people might start off better or worse than others, but targeted, consistent practice can make anyone better. The ceiling is often more a product of effort than natural ability limitations. We love helping these students, and the great news is that good high school students are often very competitive for major scholarships once their test scores come up.

Zack Robinson
Zack is the founder and Chief Geek at Test Geek. He is passionate about building the most effective test prep program on the planet.

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