Standardized Tests are Ideal for College Admission

One thing that Con has failed to do is provide any solution to this problem of college admission. If you recall, I said, "... I do not claim that standardized test are the best in each of those sub categories. I claim that they are the best overall option..." I know that standardized tests are not adaptive to students. This would be contrary to the core values I proposed of uniformity, fairness, and direction. Since this is the only argument you have provided thus far, so I will respond to it. Before I do so, I would like to address some light on your evidence. I understand that some potentially good students are going to be condoned, but my argument is that this will be minimal and they are not completely hopeless. In your example, I would like to point out that your friend did not get admitted to better universities because she had not shown the ability to do so at that time. This would be dumb for a college to invest in her at that point because for all they knew, she did not have the potential. What I will say is that there has had to be a drastic change in her life because no student having a 2.004 GPA would go to a 3.402 in a higher level of education without effort. I would say, and con can correct me if I'm wrong, but she under went a change which was not evident from the way she had done before, or she did on the test. She went on to do well in college because she changed her ways, and from the looks of it, has gone to do more and now goes to FIU. She had shown her potential with a high GPA and her desire for better and hence that is what the college could use as an indication of success. These were of course not available before she began college so any college admitting her would be taking a gamble, which is not the wisest thing to do.One criticism I have is that the diversity of your data is extremely low. They are all about people close to you so that provides a very biased set of information. And then regarding your comment saying that the tests need to adapt to the individual. Have you considered how this would make it unfair for students as the test is different for everyone. The reason that I had proposed a standardized test, was so that it would be practical, uniform and fair. I understand your desire to be tailored to each individual's ability, but then could we compare to others any more? The purpose for this is to help college admission, and if we tailored to everyone's needs then we couldn't compare them anymore because each test is so different from the other. Con is being naive proposing a more adaptive test as this would not be of use to college admission anymore as they do not know how the applicants compare to each other. What you would get is each applicant doing good as the test is suited to their needs, so it's great if you want to make the students happy, but our goal is to find good potential students for college efficiently, and adaptive tests cannot suffice.Con claimed that the tests are already unreliable, using himself and people he knew as an example, but his alternative of subjecting it to each individual will only make this worse and become even more unreliable than it is now. The purpose of the standardized test is to find out who will likely do good in college and find able students, and standardized tests do this better than adaptive ones. And further, your criticism of the influence of some prevalent standardized tests in the US on the high school education is not anything that is forced to happen. It is something the schools decide to do so that they might better fulfill the purpose that you mentioned. The percentage of students heading to college after high school is 70%, which is beyond just the majority [1]. The people who desire not to go to college are a mere 30% and so more than most of the students are being aided the way they need it [1]. Then my point is that the topic covered in standardized tests are general topics which will help even people in future labor jobs interact with what is the majority of people, and their potential bosses. Since the majority benefit from this by greatly preparing them for their future education and the minority by conditioning them to be able to interact with them and understand them, Standardized test are providing the guidance and direction that I had established was one of their benefits. In conclusion, Standardized tests remain the most ideal choice for college admission. Con has not provided any alternative position that is better than standardized testing. The only thing he has alluded to is adaptive tests, but I have said why that is more detrimental than helpful for college admissions. Since the third round is only for rebuttals, unless Con manages to disprove my arguments and refute me to the point where adaptive tests are better, vote PROSources:1. http://www.usnews.com...