All aptitude tests will fail once they become a standard, because suddenly test-takers are able to prepare for their test. Take the SAT. All students are told by teachers that it's in their best interests to buy books of old tests so they can see and memorize the questions and see patterns for answering in the new test. The test suddenly becomes a metatest: the real test is very often about how well you can prepare for a test. And in the end, it doesn't matter, because within a certain percentile colleges don't care. It's all so that CollegeBoard can make a lot of money and certain colleges can use the SAT as a qualifier to filter students more quickly.
A real aptitude test might test students' abilities to form opinions and chains of logic. They might test, rather than their ability to write a five-paragraph essay or to understand an analogy, the ability of a student to convey information with as precise language as possible. A math aptitude test may test a student's ability to prove points - but rather than using an obscure formula like current high school geometry, it would use natural language and grade on the idea rather than the jargon.
Really, the only aptitude test that matters and can't be faked is one for creativity, and that's only because you can't test on it. (A year ahead of me at the New Jersey Governor's School for the Arts, according to our head instructor, was called by CollegeBoard to try a hypothetical test for creativity - including a multiple choice section, of all things. The test was abandoned when all the handpicked students gave extremely different responses to every question.)
I think that's why colleges are abandoning the SAT test as criteria. Some top-notch colleges don't ask for test scores at all (some are even weaning away from GPA, which is a godsend for certain types of students). That's a smart choice on their part. What do test scores prove? Our year's valedictorian, a very bright girl who also took a dozen SAT practice tests, got a 1600 on the main section. I had no practice tests and got a 1510. In the end, the numbers are so close as not to matter. Even a perfect 800 category means nothing other than a person's happening not to slip up (and with a 4-hour test, slip-ups are all too common). Our principal, at a ceremony, gave us awards for our perfect sections while talking about how this made us perfect scholars. This is a terrible mindset with testing and it encourages things to get only worse.
"I think that's why colleges are abandoning the SAT test as criteria. Some top-notch colleges don't ask for test scores at all"
What is the evidence that colleges are abandoning the SAT test? What top-notch colleges do you specifically have in mind that don't ask for test scores at all?
Some comments on trends in college preferences for test scores can be found in
of which the immediately relevant part is a statement by a Harvard admission officer at a public meeting, "There are a lot of students with A's, and test scores help us distinguish among them. Standardized tests are comparison tools. The better predictors are SAT II Subject Tests and AP tests. They are more important than the SAT I or the ACT. You may have read that colleges are expressing doubt about standardized tests, but I'll give you a clue: We won't be cutting back on tests. We might require five SAT II tests. Those are less coachable than the SAT I."
The largest number of colleges that are publicized as SAT-optional might in fact better be characterized as admission-requirement-optional, as they admit most applicants who apply at all, and in many cases have explicit open-admission policies.
"a very bright girl who also took a dozen SAT practice tests, got a 1600 on the main section. I had no practice tests and got a 1510. In the end, the numbers are so close as not to matter."
This is a good point. Students who obsess about a perfect SAT score simply don't understand the theory of estimating mental abilities. Any one instance of taking the test is a sample of learned behavior, and no such sample is exhaustive.
Because almost all students make mistakes on the SAT, and because all colleges desire to fill their entering classes each year, all colleges everywhere gladly admit students who made mistakes on the SAT.
So really students worry far too much about the SAT when they could be doing something important like reading a challenging book about a subject they like or pursuing a personal project that satisfies their curiosity.
