As a Canadian I never took anything like the SAT. I don’t quite get why it exists. Or why people are convinced it needs to exist. Most of the world does fine without it.
That being said, I support whatever helps empower the diminished classes and helps quash the undeserved power of those born into money. …And in that case, the SAT might make a lot of sense now that I think of it.
Even if your teenage years were a quagmire and you have no grades to show for it, a single test can still open you up to academic opportunities.
Yes, that's exactly the historical rationale for the adoption of the SAT. It gained popularity in the first half of the 20th century as an attempt to identify poor kids with academic potential, so they could get educational opportunities that would otherwise have been out of their reach. Harvard, for example, used to be populated almost entirely by people who had gone to expensive private schools -- and then in 1934 they started giving admission and scholarships to students from lower classes who scored well on standardized tests, as part of an effort to improve socioeconomic mobility.
That being said, I support whatever helps empower the diminished classes and helps quash the undeserved power of those born into money. …And in that case, the SAT might make a lot of sense now that I think of it.
Even if your teenage years were a quagmire and you have no grades to show for it, a single test can still open you up to academic opportunities.