SAT Prep | Connecticut

We often get the following question from Connecticut parents and students: why are standardized tests so important?

We are really reluctant to defend the SAT because there is an obvious thought that we have a self-serving reason to justify the SAT.  Guilty as charged!  But, nonetheless.

A counter-example might illustrate the point. It surprises many parents to discover see that work/extracurricular activities are low on the list of criteria that admissions officers find highly important.   

Subjective areas are simply hard to judge on a comparative basis.

How does one determine whether an all-state trumpet player is better at "activities" than a student council vice-president?   

What about the kid who works 20 hours per work during the school year due to financial need? 

How would you compare someone with hundreds of community service hours as a camp counselor doing fun activities with kids versus someone with fewer hours but with all those hours devoted to a local hospice?

One might think that grades provide a better measure of fairness. We used to say that this was not always true.  Now, we say that grades – across the country – are about as unfair as any “objective criteria.”  Sorry Mississippi but your public schools are nowhere as strong as those in Connecticut.  So the student who is ranked 20^th of 100 in a typical public school in Mississippi should not be considered to have grades that are equivalent to students ranked in the top 20% at East Lyme High School.  

As we all know, within Connecticut, there are vast differences in quality among different schools.

As such, the level of competition at each school varies considerably. There are a couple of schools in our Southeastern, CT area where many students in the middle of their class would most likely be in the top 10% of certain neighboring schools that have a far less competitive environment.

We are only referencing our local area. The scope of differences across the nation is so extraordinary that one could argue that "A-quality" work in one locality might rate a "B" or lower in many other places.

For example, students who earn As at The Williams School in New London are really earning As. They are taking classes with top teachers, top students, and a top workload.  At other Connecticut schools, grade inflation is rampant.

Even within single schools, many students are the victim of the "tough grading" teacher in a certain class, while others in the same subject area benefit from having an easier grader. This is certainly unfair.

As for teacher and counselor recommendations, as one college admissions officer told us, "after a while, the letters start to sound the same" and "unless the letter suggests something highly unusual about the student, we usually do a quick read-through of the letter and then examine the rest of the file."

While essays are important, so many students are helped on the essays by parents, friends and coaches that even this uniquely individual part of the application has lost some of its fairness factor.

When it comes to the SATs and ACTs, those numbers relate to at least one objective area where all students across the country are tested in the exact same way.

Oddly enough, despite the criticism of the unfairness of these standardized tests, the tests are probably the equitable part of the application process.

And for students from school systems in rigorous environments such as East Lyme, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook, Madison and Guilford, among other Connecticut locations, SAT tests are opportunities to shine.