It’s been a question for as long as teens have been spending their weekends with a number two pencil filling in tiny bubbles on a testing sheet.
Now the college board has announced they are doing away with the pencils and going all digital, as calls for the tests to be thrown out all together get louder.
Those calls increased after the 'Varisty Blues' scandal, when some rich and famous parents were caught cheating to get their kids into college. That included hiring imposters to take SAT and ACT exams for their kids.
The reality is the tests are already losing importance. According to Inside Higher Ed, more than 1,600 four-year colleges and universities did not require kids to submit ACT or SAT scores to be considered for 2022 enrollment.
That is more than two-thirds of the schools that offer bachelor degrees in the U.S.
According to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, the schools that no longer require the tests include some big names like Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
The move away from college admission testing comes as research suggests all standardized testing follows a similar pattern - kids from poorer families do worse than kids with money.
The studies indicate wealthy parents have access to testing prep and tutors that poorer families just don’t have.
The groups behind the SAT and ACT say the tests are an objective way to evaluate all students and actually level the playing field.