A Historical Analysis of the SAT

How a tool for equity became a gatekeeper: The SAT’s lasting impact on opportunity and inequality in college admissions

Each year, millions of students take the SAT, with studies showing that a good proportion of students are experiencing significant increases in their stress and anxiety: “On average, students had 15 percent more cortisol in their systems the homeroom period before a standardized test than on days with no high-stakes testing.” When created, the SAT was intended to create a standardized method of identifying talented students from across the country and was seen as a large step towards educational equity. However, as its influence grew, the SAT shifted from a means of opportunity to a defining restrictor in higher education. The implementation of the SAT dramatically reshaped the college admissions process by pressuring institutions to prioritize specific student archetypes, often at the expense of equal—if not more valuable—forms of intelligence.

Before the creation of the SAT, admissions officers relied on a more holistic approach when reviewing applications. Written essays highlighted students’ voices and individual experiences, allowing schools to focus on the character of the individual applicant rather than standardized comparisons between applicants. In addition, professors often looked at a student’s performance in subjects such as Latin and Greek to evaluate their academic abilities. However, this began to change during World War 1. At the time, psychologist Robert Yerkes used an IQ test to recruit members of the Army. By 1923, Carl Brigham started working with Yerkes in hopes of transforming this IQ test into a test that could be easily administered to students. On June 23, 1926, the first official SAT was launched by the College Board to 8,000 highschool student test-takers, with the goal of implementing a nationwide standardized exam. By 1935, Harvard required all of its applicants to submit an SAT score, signifying a shift in admissions practices. What was the rationale for the SAT? Well, at the time, “​​Proponents of admissions tests argued that using the SAT made admissions more progressive and fair. One president of Harvard … saw the SAT as a great equalizer, a test that would allow Ivy League universities to diversify their student bodies based on intelligence rather than family connections.” Initially intended to create a more equal admissions process, the SAT quickly gained momentum. This marked a broader transformation in educational values, as colleges started to shift away from assessing well-rounded students through personal character, and instead favored numerical metrics that claimed to quantify intelligence and academic potential.

The national implementation of the SAT created an artificially narrow archetype of the “ideal” student. The SAT led colleges to focus on students who excelled in analytical rather than creative intelligence, specifically within verbal reasoning and math. As a result, the educational system became more test-centric, creating learning environments shaped around the demands of standardized testing rather than the pursuit of intellectual curiosity. A current example of this is the rise of SAT prep centers, emphasizing performance over genuine academic enrichment. A local prep center in Closter, NJ, reveals their narrow success strategies: “Prestige provides the best SAT prep courses that help students learn just what they need to achieve competitive scores fast.” These institutions focus on pattern recognition and test-taking strategies instead of valuing actual mastery of the material. Specifically, features like the Desmos calculator on the math section incentivize students to use calculator shortcuts instead of conceptual problem-solving. This shift has disproportionately benefited students of a higher socioeconomic status, as they can afford extensive test preparation, deepening existing class disparities in college admissions.

The SAT has marginalized students from less privileged backgrounds, reinforcing a biased definition of merit. Originally named the “Scholastic Aptitude Test,” the test was renamed simply to the “SAT” to avoid the implication that the test measured innate intelligence rather than learned skill. This switch showed that the outcome of a given student was not a representation of their intelligence; however, the SAT continued to be treated as a meritocratic benchmark. Additionally, students from less fortunate backgrounds are prone to increased levels of stress when completing these tests: “Students from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, with both the highest rate of poverty and crime, saw the largest changes in cortisol in advance of testing, suggesting that their scores were the most affected — and therefore the least valid measures of what they actually knew.” This suggests that the SAT may not be a good assessment of academic ability, as it can be heavily influenced by alternative factors, such as stress, that disproportionately affect underprivileged students. This further undermines the credibility of using the SAT as a national measurement of merit.

The rise of the SAT has led to a more reductive approach when evaluating applicants. Admissions officers, under pressure to process increasing numbers of applications while maintaining a competitive ranking, have come to rely heavily on SAT scores as a quick method of filtering through applications. This leads officers to skim over more holistic methods of admission, such as personal essays, extracurricular activities, interviews, and letters of recommendation. These elements add unique aspects of personality to applications, which standardized testing ultimately undermines. As a result, students face immense pressure to exceed a school’s average SAT score, leading students to retake the test multiple times to fit in a school’s desired range. Additionally, the College Board has allowed students to start “super-scoring” their SAT: “Another reason to take the SAT a second time is that many schools use a process called "superscoring." Superscoring is when a college combines a student's highest Math section score with their highest Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section score, even if those scores are from different test dates, to come up with the student's total SAT score.” This test-centric strategy turns the admissions process into a numbers game, pushing students to focus on score optimization rather than meaningful personal intellectual growth.

In recent years, the SAT has faced growing backlash, leading to the rise of the test-optional movement. This resistance was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, when many students were not able to access open testing centers. As a result, colleges suspended standardized testing requirements due to this lack of accessibility. “As of Monday, 183,000 September-registered students and 154,000 October-registered students are unable to take the test due to closures or COVID safety precautions, the College Board said in a statement.” While originally intended as a temporary measure, a number of institutions chose to permanently adopt test-optional policies after growing backlash, and seeing a more diverse applicant pool. These policies have helped even out the playing field for students from underrepresented racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, who often lack access to expensive, well-resourced, test-preparatory programs. However, this test-optional policy has inadvertently inflated scores, instilling a mindset in students that they must achieve a higher threshold of score in order to boost their application, or they might as well not submit any testing. This stark comparison highlights how standardized testing can reinforce inequality, while test-optional policies offer a more inclusive and equitable approach to admissions.

The SAT has fundamentally changed the college admissions process by promoting a narrower ideal, defined by numerical performance rather than holistic forms of intelligence. This reliance on standardized testing has led to the exclusion of countless talented individuals whose strengths lie beyond verbal and mathematical reasoning, potentially furthering socioeconomic and racial inequalities. Interestingly, there is an alternative argument: colleges have recently identified that high SAT scores are the most directly correlated indicator of a high college GPA, resulting in the re-implementation of “test-required” universities. This presents the ongoing tension in admissions, with balancing objective predictors of academic success and the need for an equitable evaluation of student potential. Ultimately, the goal should be to foster an admissions process that can measure multiple forms of intelligence, ensuring that all students, regardless of background, are given a fair opportunity to succeed in college.

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