The SAT's not great, but it's the least broken component of the US college admissions system by far. High school grades would be better, given that a 4-year win

The SAT's not great, but it's the least broken component of the US college admissions system by far. High school grades would be better, given that a 4-year window of performance ought to trump any evaluation over 3 hours, but there's a lot of variance in high schools, and a lot of them aren't challenging at all. Detractors of the SAT don't realize that, without it, it would be impossible (rather than merely extremely difficult) for students to be admitted to elite schools without coming from wealthy or well-connected families. Colleges, understandably, don't trust grades from no-name high schools, and anyone who doesn't realize that the extracurricular/"holistic" aspect of the process is thinly-veiled socioeconomic selection (in favor of the rich, plus a few token poor, the latter being usually mountain-state whites) is not paying attention.