College applications and admissions are becoming increasingly complex and competitive. Every year, newspapers and magazines publish intimidating acceptance statistics from the Ivy League and its peers. All high school juniors and seniors are feeling the heat. Indeed, that pressure is trickling down. As a freshman, I can feel it already. Maintaining a high GPA is hard enough in a class of more than 100 other students, but to compete against the rest of the country, and, in fact, the world, is a whole different story.
A central piece of the college process is standardized testing. Every year, schools publish the SAT scores of the accepted students. It is fair to assume that test scores on standardized exams are a large chunk of their decision-making process. Many colleges even use algorithms to filter out applicants with lower test scores. The ruthlessness of the process has allowed an entire test prep industry to spring up. Many test prep companies offer both online and in-class training. Standardized testing is as much about strategy and time management as it is about knowledge. In perspective, this all seems very daunting.
However, at University School, the curriculum tends to focus almost exclusively on the subject material of the tests rather than the tests themselves. Instead of effectively outsourcing this test prep to expensive and binding contracts to third parties by forcing students to hire a tutor, US ought to run their own classes. The administration should form a committee of teachers who are willing to focus part-time on test prep. This, in effect, will allow us to learn for standardized tests without having to look beyond our well endowed school. If the administration really wants to raise young men in a nurturing environment, doing so in the real, modern world cannot be neglected.