The College Board SATs are ripping you off

So you think the SATs are an objective measure of 'scholastic aptitude'? It turns out that they are the sad and sorry descendants of now-discredited intelligence tests developed during WWII to more efficiently process soldiers for various vocations according to 'aptitude'.

It wasn't always this way: the College Board was initially set up in 1900 at the instigation of the presidents of Columbia and Harvard Universities, to offer uniform standards of high school education for admission to college, so that colleges participating in the scheme could have a uniform set of expectations of what their admitted students would know and understand. The original tests were not multiple-choice but were instead essay questions based on a syllabus designed by high school teachers and college faculty working in collaboration. Now that the field of pscyhometric testing has fallen out of fashion elsewhere and the simple one-variable theories of intelligence undergirding its practice largely replaced by more sophisticated understandings of human intelligence and ability, why does the SAT still hold sway over college admissions? It can be only a misguided belief in 'quantitative methods' and laziness in seeking alternatives that require real effort in assessment.

Read more in this article by Diane Ravitch.