Standardized tests are the best way for colleges to decide on potential students.

Thanks to my opponent for coming back to offer a good argument in spite of the forfeited round. A forfeited round often means the debate is over and I am happy to see this was not the case. Going on... C1: I do not argue that the SAT does not give colleges useful information, only that is is not as unbiased and objective as it is made out to be. My opponent argues that colleges could simply adjust the scores, but if it were an ideal admissions test and there would be no need to adjust the scores. Also, the disparity is far more than the slight discrepancy that my opponent suggested. The average SAT score for all students last year was 1509. The average score for African Americans was 1276 and the average score for Asian Americans was 1623. This is a huge gap. The average score for students whose parents made over $200,000 a year was 1702 and the average score for students whose parents made less than $20,000 a year was 1321. (1) The difference between the sexes was much smaller than this but statistically significant. The differences across races and income was incredibly huge. It's not something you can just iron out my weighing scores. C2: Our respective opinions about whether $45 dollars is a reasonable cost for the test isn't really relevant. The fact is some people have to be careful with their money just to make sure they can get by and spending $45 on a test can be a burden, especially when taking the test multiple times is an advantage. Also, GPA may be a 'peculiar' measuring tool at times, but colleges have access to information to judge how hard it is to get high grades at various schools. Harder courses, including honors and AP courses, are also often weighed to give students whose grades may be hurt by harder work a boost. An though it may still at times be a 'subjective' measuring device, the discrepancies in the SAT are quite extreme as well. C3: I can say with a relative degree of certainty that a 300 page book that costs $30 dollars will help a great deal more than a free booklet. SAT books provide lists of hundreds of works to know and allow students to gain experience answering the questions. Familiarity with the test can be very important since for the top students, 'careless errors' were listed as the main cause of mistakes and math questions (1). Also, may be true that students with more money get higher GPA's as well. However, I am only trying to negate the argument that the SAT has an advantage over GPA by being more objective. If they are both bad in the same area than that's fine as long as it shows that the SAT is not superior in it's alleged area of advantage. C4: "Students taking these tests aren't required to figure out complicated algorithms nor do they need to conduct research or prepare for a presentation. They simply need to show that they understand the concepts they have learned in school and that they can apply them." This is exactly my point. Answering 20 simple math questions in 25 minutes without making careless errors is not a gauge of who will do well in an elite engineering program, or even who can do their taxes without errors given enough time. Rapidly scribbling an essay in 25 minutes does not show who can craft a well written research paper. The multiple choice questions on the CR give a vague idea of the student's vocabulary (there are around 15 vocab questions per test so it's kind of a crapshoot) but the passages suffer the same fault as the math. They require you to read a short passage quickly and good a superficial understanding of the author's message while not retaining any of it. For college level reading assignments, students have as much time as they are willing to alot to reading and are expected to finish reading with a detailed understanding which will be retained. In summary, the test is not testing the skills that students actually need in college. C5: I have disproved the idea that standardized tests are unbiased. 20-40% swings in scores do not occur randomly without any bias. Of course it is possible for an admissions essay to be biased or exaggerated, but on the SAT essay you could write that Barack Obama was born in 1876, the year the Revolutionary War ended, and not lose credit because it is not graded for accuracy. Furthermore, colleges often request graded writing samples to compare the style of writing to admissions essays and insure that no cheating has gone on. C6: A student can take easy classes and maintain a high GPA, but their grades will not be weighed and they will have a weak resume. There is going to be the occasional teacher that is brutal and can't be accounted for, but more often than not these teachers do teacher harder courses at are weighted. Also, maintaining a high GPA certainly requires hard work and intelligence if you want to maintain a resume that selective colleges were considered. It's not a matter of having hard courses or having a high GPA, in order to get considered a universities that are highly selective you have to have both. For colleges that tend to accept a lot of students that do not take honors, AP, IB, or other higher level courses, the issue of how accurate a selection method is isn't that important because they don't have to select accurately anyway. GPA also requires a long term commitment, the ability to do a wide variety of work, and suffers from no weaknesses that cannot also be attributed to the SAT. Conclusion: I do not maintain that GPA is a flawless way of doing admissions, but the fact is 3.5 years of l work will tell you more about a student than 3.5 hours in a testing center. The SAT is not a pure, perfect test of intelligence, it suffers from extreme bias and does not test the skills that college profs want in their students. GPA is a more accurate way to approximate this. Though it can be inflated falsely, if this is done that colleges can easily tell the student does not step up to challenges, which is usually a deal-breaker for admissions at schools that are truly selective. Sources: (1) http://www.usatoday.com...