Children across America are exposed to a variety of standardized tests beginning in elementary school, all leading up to the much anticipated, and often dreaded, SAT and ACT — the deal maker or breaker for decades in determining a student’s college acceptance.
Whereas it was once a one-and-done test completed without any preparation beyond class studies, today preparation begins months if not years in advance, with many students hiring private tutors and completing hours of study and practice tests and usually choosing to take it multiple times. It is a rite of passage that continues to evolve, especially with the more recent shift of colleges making it optional for application following research that questioned the reliability of the tests as predictors of college performance.
A Studied History
Standardized testing in America has roots as far back as the 19th century when, with the rapid growth of American cities due to European migration, states began offering universal education. Up until this time, a variety of private schools, tutors, church schools, and colleges made up the educational system. The burgeoning population overwhelmed these options, creating a need for public education. Mass public education took off, and by the early 1900s, approximately 80 percent of children age 5 to 17 were enrolled in school.
At about this same time, the idea of achievement tests emerged for the purpose of making education more structured and efficient. Prior to the mid 19th century, testing was administered orally, and classes were composed of different age groups. With the advent of public universal education, classes became more structured by age and proficiency. Standardized tests not only made education more efficient but also served as an embodiment of the idea of fairness and universal access that have distinguished American schools from their foreign counterparts.
Around the turn of the 20th century, 12 elite universities in the Northeast created the College Entrance Examination Board. This organization developed the College Boards, which were standardized admissions exams that took five days to complete and covered several subjects. The IQ test was developed in 1905, and by the time of World War I, it was used to test more than 2 million recruits.
Carl Brigham, who worked with the Army and its tests, later came up with his own version that evolved into the SAT. The first SAT, which was called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, was administered in 1926 with the intention of determining mental aptitude, as opposed to general knowledge. It contained nine subtests — two math oriented and seven verbal.
In 1933 James Conant, president of Harvard, started a scholarship program for incoming freshmen who did not come from the traditional eastern prep schools. Henry Chauncey, the assistant dean, recommended using the SAT to test and evaluate the candidates for the scholarship. He also persuaded all schools that were members of the College Board to use the SAT for college admissions in 1938. After WWII, the SAT increased in usage due to both machine scoring, which rapidly sped up processing time, as well as the influx of veterans on the GI Bill. The establishment of the Educational Testing Service in 1947 expanded the SAT beyond the 50 colleges that made up the College Board.
The early phase of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States ignited educational reform. The Soviets’ first successful test of a nuclear bomb occurred in 1949, and only eight years later they launched the first man-made satellite — Sputnik. Sputnik had a major impact on Americans because it not only showed that the Soviets were ahead technologically but also that they could launch a nuclear bomb on the United States with a missile.
In response, the United States initiated educational reform by enacting the National Defense Education Act in 1958. This legislation provided funding for the improvement of schools especially in the areas of science and technology in order to compete with the Soviet Union.
One year after the National Defense Education Act was enacted, the American College Testing Program was founded by Ted McCarrel and E.F. Lindquist. Lindquist believed the country needed a new and different national test for college-bound students. Whereas the SAT sought to test for innate mental aptitudes, Lindquist desired the ACT to test for achievement and retained knowledge. He also wanted the test to be used for placement as well as admissions and hoped the test would be used by more schools than the SAT.
However, it wasn’t until 2012 that the ACT overtook the SAT for most students taking the test. Since that time, the SAT has regained the top position with 1.7 million test-takers to the ACT’s 1.35 million in 2022. The ACT is owned by the nonprofit ACT, Inc., headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa. The ACT covers four areas: English, math, reading, and science. An optional writing test is also offered.
During the time of Soviet angst in the 1950s, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation was formed to identify intellectually talented youth and to encourage their development. The PSAT was first administered in 1959, the same year as the ACT, to 10th and 11th graders as a preliminary test to the SAT and was adopted by the National Merit Scholarship Corp. in 1971 to determine National Merit Scholarship winners. Students should take the PSAT for two reasons: to prepare for the SAT and to qualify for National Merit Scholarships.
Test-Taking Today
The SAT of today has evolved and changed over the years. In researching various approaches to improving the SAT, the College Board chose to include questions in what became known as “the fifth section” to help test out new material. Thus, the students were subjected to an extra test requiring additional time and mental energy so that the College Board could improve future questions. This “experimental section,” hidden in the SAT, has been controversial as many parents, paying handsomely for their child to take the SAT, felt the College Board should have hired test-takers and not exploited the students and compromised their scores with an additional section.
In reviewing the completeness of the SAT, many critics reasoned and debated the possibility of adding a written essay section. Discussions continued for years, reaching a crescendo in the mid-1990s, but not until 2005, 90 years after the SAT was conceived, was the 50-minute writing section added. While scoring the question-and-answer sections of the test was standard, scoring a written essay is subjective, sometimes resulting in low scores for talented writers that left many students and teachers alike surprised and confused.
Many educators believed that scoring the essays using an overly formulaic approach to writing was simply not a reasonable or adequate decision. Ultimately in 2016, the College Board finally considered the demands being placed on the students with this extra component and made the writing essay optional. Then in June 2021, it was eliminated completely.
The 2023 SAT has significant changes from the 2022 test. The 2022 test was three hours long and was comprised of three sections: reading, writing/language, and math. The 2023 SAT is now two hours long, instead of three, and consists of two sections: reading/writing and math.
The SAT is also going all digital in 2024, as did the PSAT in 2023. The digital format brings more than just a different way of taking questions and submitting answers. The test becomes adaptive and specific to the individual, so every exam is different. The way this works is that the answers from the first test section, called Module 1, will be used to generate the questions in Module 2. The reading passages will also be shorter, with only one question per passage.
The digital exam also has some tools for students to use during the exam, such as a graphing calculator, a digital reference sheet, and a way to flag questions to come back to later. Students will also be able to take practice adaptive tests through the Bluebook app. Test scores will be available in only a few days as opposed to the weeks-long wait of the past. With the PSAT going digital this year, it too will be adaptive like the SAT and will have the same format.
The 2023 ACT has no major changes to its format or method of taking. In addition to college admissions, the ACT is used to assess the performance of schools in certain states and school districts. In these areas, all high school students are required to take the ACT whether they choose to go to college or not. At least 13 states require ACT testing of all public school 11th graders.
What Test to Take?
Colleges do not prefer one test over the other, so it is really up to students and their parents which one to take or both. It is very common for both to be taken. The ACT has more questions, and students have less time for each question. The ACT is still a pencil and paper exam, but it will probably go digital in the next few years.
Recently, less importance has been placed on the SAT and ACT for college admissions. Currently, 1,750 U.S. colleges and universities do not require ACT/SAT scores to be considered for college admittance. These include all Ivy League schools as well as other well-known elite universities such as Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Notre Dame. Another 85 will not even look at test scores if submitted. The University of California system, covering all public schools in the state and more than 480,000 students, has adopted this position. This turn away from standardized tests is largely a result of the COVID-19 virus, which closed testing sites during the pandemic in 2020-21, but the trend started years earlier.
Not using standardized test scores in the college admissions process is controversial. Beliefs differ as to whether the ACT/SAT tests are equitable or inequitable to the disadvantaged. Some feel the tests are slanted for the higher socioeconomic classes and therefore are not fair. Others believe that if the tests are not used, then the disadvantaged are not being judged on a level playing field since they may lack the opportunities for extracurricular activities that would play a larger role in the selection process.
The future of these tests is unclear. Beyond college admissions, the SAT/ACT are used by high schools as a tool to measure performance and attract new students. The U.S. News and World Report college rankings also take these standardized tests in consideration when conducting its research. Schools that do not use the scores at all, such as all California public colleges and universities, are penalized. Test taking has dropped since 2019, the year before the pandemic. That year 4 million took at least one of the tests, and in 2022 that number dropped to 3 million, an uptick from 2021 of 2.8 million.
The College Board reports that with the SAT, 20 percent of high school students did not take the test, 30 percent took it but did not submit it, and 50 percent took and submitted their scores. Colleges and universities use the test scores in different ways. The elite Ivy schools are more likely to use them for picking out the very smartest of the applicant pool and then use that as one criterion of many in choosing its students. Large state universities use them as a way to winnow the list initially due to the thousands and thousands of applications they receive, and smaller cost-conscious schools use them to predict student ability since losing a student is expensive.
Since no two people are alike, it seems almost preposterous to standardize anything when analyzing individuals for college admissions, yet standardized tests have served a vital role in creating a secondary educational system to which the world flocks.
Where is the Class of 2023?
Congratulations to the graduating class of 2023 on their first semester of college! Below are the top 15 colleges attended by this year’s freshmen from a sampling of independent schools and public school districts of the Midlands.
Ben Lippen
Anderson University
Belmont Abbey College
Berklee College of Music
Berry College
The Citadel
Clemson University
Columbia International University
Coker University
Savannah College of Art & Design
United States Military Academy, West Point
University of South Carolina
University of Sydney
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech
Wofford College
Cardinal Newman
Clemson University, Honors
Cornell University
Duke University
Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Honors
Emory University
Howard University
Johns Hopkins University
New York University, Shanghai
North Carolina A & T State University, Honors
The College of William and Mary
United States Coast Guard Academy
United States Military Academy
University of South Carolina, Honors
Washington and Lee University
Washington University
Hammond
Boston University
Clemson University, Honors
Columbia University
Cornell University
Davidson College
Duke University
Georgetown University
Georgia Institute of Technology
New York University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Michigan
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Honors
University of Pennsylvania
University of South Carolina, Honors
Yale University
Heathwood Hall Episcopal School
College of Charleston, Honors
Clemson University
Duke University
Emory University
Georgia Tech
The College of William and Mary
University of Georgia
University of Michigan
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Richmond
University of South Carolina, Honors
Wake Forest University
Washington & Lee University
Wofford College
Yale University
Northside Christian Academy
Anderson University
Charleston Southern University
Clemson University
College of Charleston
Columbia College
Columbia International University
Lee University
Midlands Technical College
Misericordia University
North Greenville University
Pensacola Christian College
Texas A&M, Blinn District
University of South Carolina
University of South Carolina, Beaufort
University of South Carolina, Honors
Richland District One
Benedict College
Claflin University
Clemson University
Coastal Carolina University
Charleston Southern University
College of Charleston
Lander University
Midlands Technical College
Newberry College
North Carolina A&T State University
South Carolina State University
University of South Carolina
University of South Carolina, Aiken
University of South Carolina, Upstate
Winthrop University
Sandhills School
American College of the Building Arts
Anderson University
Berry College
Brevard College
The Citadel
Clemson University
Coastal Carolina University
College of Charleston
Columbia International University
High Point University
Newberry College
Roanoke College
Savannah College of Art & Design
University of South Carolina
Western Carolina University
