It’s a rite of passage for nearly all college-bound kids, but if the NACAC had their way, the SAT would only play a minor role in the admissions game. A NACAC commission, led by Harvard’s dean of admission, just released a report questioning the overemphasis on SAT scores. The committee of guidance counselors and admission officers found that the SAT was an “incredibly imprecise” indicator of success in college and encouraged the U.S. News and World Report to stop using them as a factor in ranking colleges. The magazine’s ranking methods put pressure on schools to admit high scorers in order to maintain or improve their position in the annual list.

Some say that a national, standardized test is necessary to offset grade inflation and compare students from different schools, but in its current form, the SAT does a poor job of predicting how well an applicant will do in college. Worse, it is often an admissions roadblock for lower-income students who often score too low to qualify for scholarships or even application to more competitive schools. Because of the huge test prep industry, the disparity between wealthy and poor test-takers has grown over the years. While some kids can afford to brush up on exam strategies with private tutors, others lack access to even basic manuals. Whether or not you think a national standard is needed, we can all agree that the SAT is hardly a fair game.