Media Appearances

More students are taking AP exams, and selective colleges are becoming more vocal about using AP exam scores to help make college admissions decisions.

College admissions still aren’t truly merit-based because colleges rely on subjective and privilege-tilted factors like legacy preferences and recommendation letters instead of more consistent measures of academic readiness—and that they should move toward a more genuinely meritocratic system.

In an era of academic doubt in which grades are inflated and college admissions officers are unsure whether a student’s application essays were written by the student or AI, SAT and ACT scores are the only universally available and authenticated measures of academic preparedness.

Headlines from the Wall Street Journal to The Atlantic have cited the recent UC San Diego report as a “canary in the coal mine” for higher education. This data-heavy session explores the confluence of grade inflation, Covid learning loss, student use of artificial intelligence, and the removal of standardized test scores from the college admissions process. We will analyze the cascading effects of enrolling underprepared students (more years of college, higher debt, and reduced STEM persistence). We will then outline concrete solutions: identifying those students who need more resources, safeguarding access to success, and restoring authenticated proficiency.

Grade inflation and artificial intelligence have made admissions officers less trusting of grades and essays in applications. SAT and ACT, in contrast, are returning in their importance, not only for getting into college but also for affording it.

Students who are not sufficiently prepared to succeed at a college but who are admitted anyway are not set up for success.