My 54 Year Love Affair with the SAT : Response

When reading the excerpt the first thing that jumped out to me was when Mr. Kaplan stated " I could see that the questions were designed to test student's knowledge and applications of basic concepts, not their ability to regurgitate facts". That statement seemed so interesting to me because classes which are Science or History based seem to do just that teach students facts and test them in order to see what percentage of facts they remember. Really if you think about it classes that are not centered on Math or English consist of only facts. However schools teach more than just Math and English and they try to give the students a fair amount of education in each category. So based on the SAT scores how would you gauge a student’s overall knowledge if the school system does more than just teach students basic concepts. Also the SAT scores focuses on Math Reading and Writing however colleges need the students to be equally adapt in those areas as well as History, and Science even though those courses are not on the SAT. Another interesting point of the reading was the section regarding how the SAT created a "leveled playing field". Mr. Kaplan believed that the SAT allowed students who didn't come from a prestigious high school to attend a top 10 college. However I disagree with that statement because if you take two students, one coming from a great private high school ranked in the top 10 in the country and has a 3.8 GPA and the other student comes from a public school in the bottom 10 high school with a 4.0 GP, and you give them the exact same test then one student has a clear advantage over the other because the program he comes from has gave him a higher education than the other student. I also don’t agree with colleges looking at SAT scores because it gives very limited information on the student rather than focusing on the GPA. The student's GPA shows how well they absorb information and the type of effort they bring forth. With those two characteristics alone you can determine how well you can educate this student and how likely they will succeed in an academic environment.