Andrew Beale's The Evolution Of College Admission Requirements

Applying to college in the United States of America can be a long process consisting of many requirements. College admission requirements have been changing for centuries “in order to ensure that the full range of talent that an institution is capable of developing is properly represented in the student body” according to Andrew Beale in his article “The Evolution of College Admission Requirements.” During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries admission was granted based on ones “ability to read and translate Latin and Greek.” By the time the 1950s surfaced, there was an increase in standardized exams which soon adopted environmental and nonintellectual factors by the 1960s, Beale writes. As we know, there should be a fair playing field

Jeff Barker explains that exceptional athletes are accepted to large universities, such as the University of Maryland, North Carolina State, and Georgia Tech, attending to more lenient criteria and are “specially admitted,” in his article “For ‘at-risk’ Athletes, a Boost that Sometimes Leads Nowhere.” Documents have shown that these athletes face costly academic challenges leading to a lower performance. Barker quotes Anne Duncan, the United States Education Secretary, who says that “too many special admits are not capable of doing college work and competition on Day One.” Without a doubt, admitting such admits proposes a problem. It is unfair to the numerous applicants who meet the requirements but are denied acceptance due to the lack of space. As a solution, all applicants, no matter their status, should have to abide by an established universal application process, and meet the same admission requirements upon

However, in March 2014, College Board announced that the SAT will be redesigned in 2016. The College Board describes this change as “expanding its outreach to low income students and shifting from testing abstract-reasoning skills to evidence based reading, writing and mathematical skills acquired in high school.” Some believe that this is a positive change in higher education. Randolf Arguelles, conversely, is not one of them. As the title of his article suggests, in “The New SAT Will Widen the Education Gap; Everyone Who Takes the Test is Measured against the Same Yardstick. That 's Not True of High School Grades," Arguelles writes that “the new SAT will widen, not narrow, the education gap in the United States.” He explains that with the old SAT, what was important was if you had a strong vocabulary, could make inferences, and apply math concepts, not whether you had excellent teachers or not throughout the years. I agree. Although the new test is being designed in hopes of reliving tension by eliminating costly test preparation and focusing on concepts that should be learned over the course of high school, that may not be the case. The key phrase in the last sentence is “should be learned.” Teaching styles and learning styles vary all throughout the world; they often clash among