Illustration by Nan Jiang
Removal of college entrance exams gives new opportunities
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The SAT and ACT have long been nightmares of every high school student. The idea of one test having the potential to affect one’s entire future does not sit right with many, causing anxiety in all. However, with the mass removal of the SAT and ACT as college entrance necessities, many students are getting their fair shot in attending their dream college.
College entrance exams have never judged students on a fair scale. Many students have specific strengths and interests that make them capable candidates for college acceptance. Exams never take into account these facts, as it is judged based on academic knowledge alone, which is quite ignorant and nearsighted. There is no perfect student. But colleges have spent way too many years creating and fabricating this utopic picture of what an ideal college student should be like, setting an unreachable goal for many students who simply do not hold an interest in one subject.
Another simpler reason is that it is a relief for this generation of high school students, who have gone through much more than they signed up for. Having to participate in school during a pandemic is already a monumental task that has taken its toll on many students’ mental health. Studying for a college entrance exam might just be the thing that really breaks students. It is not viable to ask students to participate in something that could affect their life in an environment and during a time that they are struggling through. The decision to remove entrance exams was a wise decision made by colleges, and it projects that they do care about the well-being of their future students.
Although admissions officers will no longer have something standardized to judge the student off of, they never should have had a standardized scale for each student in the first place. People have never just been numbers on a sheet of paper, and they never will be. Standardized scales favor students who excel in academics, but there are so many factors in society and the workplace other than just academics. It is impossible to test the viability of a student in the same way as you would the next student. Each person is different, and it is about time that the colleges have made that realization.
