<p>“And if it is going to be something to decide the rest of our lives wouldnt it be better if it were completely accurate?”</p>
<p>There is no such thing as a “completely accurate” assessment. There just are a whole bunch of different assessment methodologies that reveal some fraction of your ability to do X or Y. The better assessments rely on actual performance of the behavior under assessment in a practical, true life situation that elicits that behavior - for example, those large scale disaster re-creations where all of the emergency personnel in a given city spend a day acting as though the disaster under study has actually occurred. One morning (or three days) of formal pencil and paper (or online) tests is a very weak imitation of the real-life college experience that includes (among others) lab work, quizzes, exams, oral presentations, long papers, short papers, theatrical performances, physical education activities, field work, etc.</p>
<p>The single best indicator for all measures of college success (first year GPA, final GPA, first year completion, graduation in four years, etc.) is the high school transcript. That is to say the courses a student has taken in high school and the grades earned in those courses. That is why colleges and universities in the US put primary emphasis on your high school work. Collectively, these institutions have thousands (yes you read that right, thousands) of years of experience in evaluating high school transcripts and choosing the most promising students for admission. The SAT and ACT add very little to the equation. Some would argue that they add nothing at all. For fun reading on that topic, see [The</a> National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest](<a href=“http://www.fairtest.org%5DThe”>http://www.fairtest.org)</p>