An unreliable, inaccurate system of using test scores and GPAs has been used for years in America, and it needs to be fixed now.

A bad score on a standardized test can keep students out of college or deprive them of scholarship money, even though it isn’t known how effective these tests are in evaluating the intelligence of the person taking them. What can the result of one standardized test really determine? Some people have good grades and understand the material, but just freeze up during tests.

Sadly, the only other option available to decide whether students are college material is using their grade point average. Students’ GPAs, however, are completely subject to the school they attended and the teachers who assigned the grades. There is no way to accurately compare one student’s abilities with another around the country.

This problem should be resolved before any more students are unjustly kept out of college or deprived of scholarship money.

If the education standards across the nation were equal, it would be much easier to compare students’ abilities. This could be done if the same curricula were used throughout the nation and if the same classes were required for graduation at all schools.

The SAT tests proficiency of reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, geometry, and algebra. If these are the skills colleges collectively want students to have, then why not require students to take courses in all of those subjects, and then require them to all score the same grade on a common final exam given to all students?

Better still, since all students in the country would be taking the same classes on the same level, the GPAs would be comparable, thus ruling out the need entirely for any nationwide test to be given.