Do you agree or disagree Standardized Tests Like the Toefl Provide Sufficient Information to Determine Whether Students Should Be Admitted to a College or University Essay Give your reasons and examples to support your view

The standardized tests such as TOEFL is required for all the international students who apply for foreign universities that their language is English. Its goal is to assess the capability of the prospective students in understanding and using English language properly. However, such tests cannot be the sole determinant for admission of international students. TOEFL, for instance, only assess the English proficiency of the applicants. It is a cross sectional tests and its results depends on how much practice a test taker has done before the exam.

An standardized test does not have the capacity to verify if an applicant has all the required characteristics for being a successful student. Admitting students should be based on the intellectual and educational merits of the applicants. For example, an applicant of human biology should have good background knowledge about the related subjects as well as enough experience in performing laboratory task. Moreover, the applicant is required to cooperate with the other students and get along with the student life. None of these mental and educational talents are assessed by the standardized tests.

In addition, the design of the standardized tests is not capable of assessing the long term performance of a student. In case of any interfering problem on the exam day, the test taker may lose sores. For example, my friend got sick on the day of her TOEFL exam. Her total point for that exam was 82 while she had already achieved grades higher than 100 in a series of practice tests with minimal effort. Thus, a standardized test cannot reflect the long term performance of a student.

Finally, by having prior practice one can manage better to respond to the tasks in an exam, comparing with those who does not have the chance to go through practice tests before the main exam. Becoming familiar with the test design and having an image of what the exam will look like, positively influence the results of the exam. Therefore, the higher score in an standardized test is not necessarily related to better knowledge of an applicant.

In summary, I believe that no standardized test is sufficient to determine whether a student should be admitted to a college or university or not.