Breaking the Standard

Written by: Sophie Norton

BREAKING NEWS: standardized test scores don’t determine everything. You, college applicant, are more than just that number from that one day during Junior Spring; you are the sum of over a decade of education, where you learned to express yourself in a myriad of ways. You are unique and you are more than your ACT score. Hampshire College, a small liberal arts college in Western Massachusetts, was the first university to adopt this philosophy. They no longer accept standardized test scores.  By doing so, the university disqualified itself from the U.S News Rankings. This led to a positive trend in quality of applications, but a decrease in the amount of applications. The President of the college described the newly admitted as people who are committed to their educational development and to the unique mission of the college, rather than people who only care about rankings. This is the right step for America’s failing education system, where the percentages of high school students with mental disorders such as depression and anxiety have skyrocketed in the past decade. Put the emphasis back on education; end the obsession with inflated stats and scores.