Do SAT and ACT measure the potential of students and is it enough?

      Getting a higher education degree is becoming more and more important as time is passing and students are faced with many challenges. Many people ( students and teachers) question the admission criteria set by the Universities. Standardized tests like the SAT and ACT is one of the major components set by most universities to select the students. The question is do these tests measure the potential of a student to do better in their studies, and is it enough to judge the intelligence of a student? These tests claim to measure students' reading, math, and the writing skills and the knowledge that they acquire during their prior education. The SAT also measures how well students can apply their knowledge, which is believes to be a good predictor of a student’s success in college.

      Most prestigious schools, like Duke and Harvard use the SAT and ACT  as one of the primary components when looking at the students admission profiles. A student need to score around 90^th percentile or higher to get accepted ( which is about 2100 out of 2400 for SAT)   Is it fair to those students who have straight A’s throughout their high school, have been involved in many extracurricular activities, or have been selected as  members of the National Honor Society to be rejected? Because they have low SAT or ACT scores, they have not been accepted in the schools with a good reputation.

     Often the general public believes that a high school can be judged on its students’ SAT and ACT scores; high scores equal good school. This is not always the case,  as psychometrician Daniel Koretz says that scores on a standardized test “usually do not provide a direct and complete measure of educational achievement.” Do these tests motivate to do better and study harder?, well it turns out that’s not the case. A study conducted by Boston College's Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy, finds out that high standard scores might give a wrong incentive to teachers and leads them to focus on encouraging memorizing among students instead of learning and reasoning.