Not just the Covid-19 pandemic has made it extremely difficult for students to attend and do well on standardized testing. Whereas Chinese students are trying to swallow every piece of information to get a 1600 on the SAT or 20 times 5 on different AP tests, other students have resigned entirely already and don't see any use in standardized testing at all anymore.
To understand the trends, let's compare the Chinese and American education system a bit.
In China, the gaokao system is the prevailing system since the 1950s but the tradition of passing exams to obtain the right to gain access is almost 2,500 years old. The tradition to choose only the very best for higher education, who will gain one of the best places in society, have the highest salaries, and the best chances for what Chinese people interprete as a 'successful' lifestyle, let's millions of students suffer through the extremely harsh tests every year.
In the U.S. and other countries around the world, the opinion that one or a couple of tests would define your place in society is rather ridiculous. However, that does not mean that U.S. citizens or other people from European countries have no testing requirements. It simply means that our traditions and philosophies tell us that a test does not show nor define who you are and that different jobs require different skills and proficiencies that a couple of written tests and a final number of test scores cannot reveal a personality.
The admission process in the U.S. is therefore more holistic which means that universities are not just choosing test-taking geniuses but also want to see what individual people are taking those tests, what their dreams, expectations, and hopes are and how they can overcome difficulties in life by being mentally flexible.
Therefore, to apply to an American university, there is a list of documents, still including grades and test scores to submit but also essays to write, some require interviews, recommendation letters from teachers, and others have specialized testing methods for certain kinds of sports, music, want to see examples of art the students can produce, and want to know what outside of school activities and hobbies the single individual has made a commitment to.
Unfortunately, here in China the culture of 'completing a set-up plan' to go to a top school is so deeply ingrained in people's minds that it is often very frustrating for them to understand what holistic actually means and they therefore choose the easy way out with one simple question: "How many and which standarized test scores do we need to apply for Ivy-League?"
This is where it gets complicated because the answer to this question will have a short-time positive effect but might have a long-term negative effect.
When parents hear: TOEFL, SAT, 3-4 APs minimum, they are usually satisfied and get to work to let their kids prepare day and night at school and outside of school, on the weekends, and all around the clock for those particular exams, not realizing that the Chinese test-taking mentality is like poison for the American higher education system.
Students are desperate to finish whatever test they have to do as quickly as possible to be left alone by their parents and then suffer extreme effects of senioritis (Not doing anything in their last year after college applications are done) anymore.
Parents in China need to understand that the philosophical Western foundations of education are not to fill a barrel but enlight a fire.
Students are faced with the challenge to become independent, autonomous, democratic, rational human beings that are able that make their own life decisions and handle any kind of problems in a sophisticated way with endurance, motivation, souvereignity, and thoughfulness. Passing nine to twenty exams with the highest scores is nice but it does not help students to develop those skills and mental concepts. What we want and what we need them to do is to develop an idea what their purpose and task in life is and what they expect their own life in happiness to be.
This concept is highly alienating for Chinese parents, students, and even some teachers. Mistrust and belittling Westerners for their approach of gamifying lessons and trying to spark meaning for whatever students are doing is firing prejudices all over the place.
What many universities are now doing to prevent more of the students with excellent standarized test results and GPA but not being able to speak five sentences in English correctly, give a presentation in front of an audience, or find a location on a map independently to enter universities is to get rid of testing methods that would select students after wrong criteria and giving students who have developed those skills but have extreme problems sitting still for three hours to finish such an exam, or cannot focus at a particular time of a day once a year, or who are simply disadvantaged in general by certain test-models the chance to show their potential in a much larger number of ways.
What will the future look of college admissions without standarized or optional standarized testing look like?
What we can assume is that most international students will still take and submit a standardarized language proficiency scores like TOEFL/IELTS/Duolingo, etc. but that SAT and ACT results will not be seen as the guiding score that brings students into a university anymore.
Also AP exam results will lose their respective meaning when universities will stronger evaluate how students prepared for those AP exams, what courses they chose and signed up for in high school, what outside activities they had, and what they will focus on in their application essays.
For colleges and universities, it will become harder to select candidates, distinguish them, and it will take more time to choose ideal candidates for certain directions of study.
For applicants, it will become incredibly hard to predict what universities will be looking for but it will also force them to think more clearly about what they want to do in the future, what they want to study, why they want to study it, and what their life ahould look like in ten to twenty years ideally.
Maybe, international schools and national governments will need to find new ways of how they want to structure and control their international school system better and more effectively to make sure, students will be able to be reintegrated into the respective national curriculum at any point in time, or new companies will focus stronger on the development of international curricula and pathing the way for a new democratic revolution rather than the thousands of private Chinese bilingual schools that are popping up and going down every year because they are offering an ineffective mix of AP, SAT, ACT, IGCSE, A-Levels, Common Core, DSE, Xianggang Tai, and Zhongkao/Gaokao but actually are only truly understanding and are able to manage and maintain the Gaokao appropriately.
Whatever the future holds, the test-optional policies and cancellation of test scores are hopefully having a positive effect for students, teachers, and schools all around the world and will spark and enlight the fire, we are still missing from so many international students and their parents.
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