<p>It’s also very interesting to note that in our school, the top ACT and SAT test scorers are almost always the kids with the heavier course loads (no study halls), and therefore are not at the top of the school rankings because of the way they’re calculated. There seem to be many people on this website that feel standardized tests aren’t a good basis for college admissions, and that GPA, rankings, and essays are more important. These ranking inaccuracies are another reason I feel that some sort of standardized test scores are very important. Without them, and if rankings aren’t really reflective of the difficulty of the student’s schedule, overall comparative difficulty of the school or of a particular teacher or class, the essay becomes far more important than it should, especially since there is no way of knowing for sure how much help they had in writing it.</p>