DaDobester So are you saying that there is no difference between a student who has a 4.0 GPA and 5 ACT vs a student with 4.0 GPA and 35 ACT in academic ability? I think you are in the minority to believe that.
And why would you think that standardized tests are a “good as scholarship baselines in which students have a goal to work towards and are rewarded for working hard to achieve that goal” but think that “they serve as a very poor measurement for the academic prestige of a university”? This appears to be contradictory.
Would Harvard be considered prestigious if all of its students were in the bottom 1% of test takers rather than the top 1%? I doubt that any person would believe Harvard’s prestige would not take a serious hit if that were the level of students that went there.
Where I do agree with you is in how ranking systems tend to make individuals believe that “Chemistry at Ohio State is harder than Chemistry at Alabama, when in reality that’s simply not the case.” Which is why I believe that CC should rethink who gets into CC Top Universities List as well as what factors should be used to arrive at that decision.
It is clear that I believe that SAT/ACT scores have its usefulness in that calculation but not in the way it is currently used, and you believe that it should not be a factor at all.
Well, then we can agree to disagree.