Lets ignore your claim at possible discrimination, and ask what the ability to game a high score on an ACT/SAT has anything to do with how successful or contributing to society someone will become?
In the internet age that we live in today, with access to all sorts of methods of memorization, I would argue scores on a standardized test are largely irrelevant, beyond testing for if someone can pass a test or not. The highest score goes not to the person who thinks critically but to the one who gamed the system the most. If you can teach someone to win at candy-crush, you can get them to ace the SAT's.
Some of the most important people in society have not typically done well in structured schooling, and this is in part because a lot of education is bs in the first place.
I would argue that "structured schooling" refers more to a university than to the SAT.
Personally I see more merit in performing well on an exam with a clear statistical context, than in filling out some bullshit lab notebook or whatever it is that people at Harvard do to earn their A- (mean grade) or A (mode).
One problem with your argument is that, without the SAT, admissions counselors will have to depend MORE on structured schooling, because they have to lean more heavily on grades, school activities, and teacher recommendations.
Your initial question, by the way, is flawed. School is not success, and education by itself is not a contribution to society. So why you use those things to judge a college entrance exam is unclear to me.
An entrance exam is a measure of intellectual horsepower. Tons of rich people throw money at SAT courses and still fare poorly, while tons of smart kids whose families wouldn't be able to afford college without financial aid fare well.
> An entrance exam is a measure of intellectual horsepower.
No its not. What are neurons? What are networks of neurons? How do the wiring of neurons affect the way an intelligence output answers? Can neurons be cultivated in certain ways? If so, can you cultivate a network of neurons to output answers with the most efficiency and correctness?
If so, what is the difference between one network optimized for standardized testing and another optimized for political upheaval? Do the neurons fire less quickly in the latter because they can't pass the answers to a test as quickly?
the best performers at school often become career academics -- a few research discoveries aside, you could say this is a pretty low-leverage position.
In other words, as you said, doing well in school means little outside of school.
So if you really wanted to come full circle on it, you could say it's actually good that people who aren't able to game a system, end up staying outside of that system.
In the internet age that we live in today, with access to all sorts of methods of memorization, I would argue scores on a standardized test are largely irrelevant, beyond testing for if someone can pass a test or not. The highest score goes not to the person who thinks critically but to the one who gamed the system the most. If you can teach someone to win at candy-crush, you can get them to ace the SAT's.
Some of the most important people in society have not typically done well in structured schooling, and this is in part because a lot of education is bs in the first place.