STAFF EDIT: “ACT”-ing the SAT

As college students, we all have memories of our SAT and ACT experiences. All the nights of cramming, heightened anxiety or for some pleas to a higher power for luck culminated in one tedious test. Of course, when many of us were in that terrifying position we knew what was at stake. Unfortunately, the college admissions process shows no signs of getting easier and the potential applicant pool will only continue to grow. Naturally, desperate circumstances can prompt test takers to take drastic action. For some, a viable option is paying someone else to take the test for you and fool the administrative system. According to an article published in The New York Times yesterday, a scandal involving Long Island high school students has now prompted those who administer the SAT and ACT tests to tighten security.

The new measures will require all students taking the test to upload a picture of themselves, which will be uploaded onto a database, printed onto their admission ticket and visible on a roster at the test site. Furthermore, the database will be accessible to college admissions personnel and high school officials. Some students paid any sum in the range of $500 to $3,600 for another person to take the test for them, while there was one case of a male student taking the SAT for females. As a result, all students will also have to provide their gender. The fact that our society has disintegrated to students using a fake ID to take a test is indicative that something is wrong.

All the pressure associated with college admissions is driving students to find shortcuts to “beat the system” as opposed to relying on their natural aptitude and hard work. Unfortunately, as long as there is demand for paid test takers, there will be people willing to accept these large sums of money to provide competitive scores.

While it is admirable that the administrators are trying to improve security at test centers, ours is the generation of technological manipulation, so who knows what loopholes will be exploited to perpetuate this alarming trend. The fact that we need to bolster security to such extremes for taking a test is ridiculous. Instead of investing this time and thought into improving school preparation for the SAT and ACT, we are forced to expend resources because we can’t trust college applicants to be honest, and that is what should change. Let’s focus on the prevailing attitude, not how it manifests into such drastic actions. Only then will we be able to fix the system.