Written by Nicholas Vetrisek
Fifty years after making the SAT mandatory for applications, The UC system is now considering allowing the test to be optional. By doing this, the UC system would be among 1,000 other colleges that also don’t require the test.
The University of California is considering dropping the test in the hope that it would allow more students from low-income households the opportunity that other students have. This argument makes no sense given the fact that SAT scores are usually indicative of a student’s actual knowledge and the overwhelming majority of school and public libraries have study materials for the test that low-income students are able to use.
In addition, websites like Khan Academy work directly with the College Board to deliver personalized SAT study free of charge.
Moreover, if the test is removed, there will likely be no baseline standard to measure student ability. Students that were lucky enough to get lenient teachers would be able to coast off of high grades, whereas students with more difficult teachers may get their applications rejected outright because even if they were one of the top performers and a ‘C’ was considered an excellent grade given the difficulty of the class, it’s still a C. It would make grade inflation a larger problem than ever before.
Lastly, lowering the standard for schools that have the distinction of being considered “Public Ivies” is the wrong path for such a prestigious system to take. This is indicative of the soft bigotry of low expectations that is prevalent in many modern universities. The idea that students from poor backgrounds are simply not good enough to get in without lowering standards is a myth that they are disproving every single day.
