It's because GPA is a poor indicator of somebody's actual degree of education. A 4.0 GPA from a high-end private school is not the same thing as a 4.0 from a poorly funded inner-city school. Homeschooling programs are usually more rigorous and prepare students better in the early years, but due to the expenses involved in high-school curriculum they often wind up not matching up to even shittier public schools. Even those have high variance in performance as they rely on the parents entirely or primarily.
The idea of the standardized test is that every person takes the same test and the college has a more objective standard to look at. In reality, the way the tests are formatted leads to biases that favor/disfavor people based some factors, but it is a better standard than just a high school GPA.
Well they are better than GPA scores, in the US at least. Standardized tests aren't necessarily great though.
There is mounting evidence that our Federal policies since the start of No Child Left Behind have increased cheating on the part of the teachers and administrators running those tests, as their jobs are now tied to the tests.
You should also consider the mechanics of the test. Multiple choice tests are exploitable by certain tactics and an understanding of game theory, something I was explicitly taught in NY public schools years ago. Certain subjects are also difficult to test en masse, so these tests tend to emphasize specific subjects.
It's because GPA is a poor indicator of somebody's actual degree of education. A 4.0 GPA from a high-end private school is not the same thing as a 4.0 from a poorly funded inner-city school. Homeschooling programs are usually more rigorous and prepare students better in the early years, but due to the expenses involved in high-school curriculum they often wind up not matching up to even shittier public schools. Even those have high variance in performance as they rely on the parents entirely or primarily.
The idea of the standardized test is that every person takes the same test and the college has a more objective standard to look at. In reality, the way the tests are formatted leads to biases that favor/disfavor people based some factors, but it is a better standard than just a high school GPA.
Well they are better than GPA scores, in the US at least. Standardized tests aren't necessarily great though.
There is mounting evidence that our Federal policies since the start of No Child Left Behind have increased cheating on the part of the teachers and administrators running those tests, as their jobs are now tied to the tests.
You should also consider the mechanics of the test. Multiple choice tests are exploitable by certain tactics and an understanding of game theory, something I was explicitly taught in NY public schools years ago. Certain subjects are also difficult to test en masse, so these tests tend to emphasize specific subjects.