If standardized tests are unfair, why aren’t application essays and GPA unfair?

Many people believe standardized tests are unfair to children of financially challenged families because their parents can’t afford to hire a tutor to help them study, while other families can spend money on tutors to help their kids get better scores. True. However, if that makes standardized tests “unfair”, then so are the college essays. Financially well-off parents can hire tutors to “help” their children with their college essays, and by “help” I mean anything from assisting with grammar to completely rewriting them. Google “college application essay help” or enter that into your local Craigslist site. Children of lower-income parents can’t afford this, just as they can’t afford tutors for the ACT or SAT. And as much as colleges will say they can easily spot an essay ghost-written by someone else, my personal experience in talking with college freshmen tells me otherwise. More than few have admitted to me that their essay “tutor” pretty much turned the hastily-written first draft into a polished final product. But hey, these parents convince themselves that the ghost-writer/ tutor just “assisted with grammar”.

And just for fun, here’s a link to a 2014 article questioning just how important college essays actually are. https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/ 

Not everyone spends money on SAT/ACT tutors, but some do while others can’t afford it. And colleges look at standardized test scores as part of your application. To some this is unfair. If that’s so, then get rid of college essays as well. And while you’re at it … some parents pay for year-round tutoring for calculus or biology or french, and students with these private tutors probably get higher grades than those who can’t afford them. Colleges consider GPA as part of their application review process. And that’s unfair. So let’s eliminate the GPA and all high school course grades from applications, too.