>Why are some American colleges (entrance into which is the aim of taking the SAT in the first place) excellent, and others not? Why the acceptance of such disparities in educational quality?

Some people, such as Bryan Caplan, believe that college is mostly about signaling.[0] The idea is that most of the value college provides for individual students is to indicate to society that the student can jump through all the hoops necessary. It's much less about what the student actually learns in college. Essentially, college is mostly about being a filter - to weed out those that can't make it. This line of thinking would also explain college acceptance tests - they are the same type of filter, but applied before college. It's there to keep the college prestigious, so that more people will try getting into it, which will allow them to only pick the best of the best.

I think there's a lot of merit to the signaling idea, because a lot of what you learn in college doesn't have much practical value for the vast majority of students. College entrance tests are just one part of this whole process.

[0] https://blog.press.princeton.edu/2018/01/23/bryan-caplan-on-...

The Harvard Extension School is a good example of this. The school wants to make money by offering classes to more students, but doesn't want people to call them "Harvard students" because it would diminish the exclusivity in their branding (the same exclusivity that attracts people to the extension school).

I majored in EE, and can say it was only the non-STEM courses that were worthless. There is no way I’d gain the same amount of knowledge without attending college.

Sure, but a large number of majors consist of non-STEM courses. I don't think that non-STEM courses don't teach you useful things either, but I think that most people don't have a use for what those courses teach. (Some people do have use for those skills though.)

It definitively is about signalling but that doesn't mean you don't learn anything in college.

Of course you learn things in college. The point is that what we're doing as a society with college is inefficient. We require a certificate from job-seekers that says that they've gone through college. But college teaches a lot of people a lot of skills and knowledge that will not be useful for a large portion of the students. Essentially, our society requires a prospective employee to demonstrate capability in things that are not necessary for their job or even rest of their life.

Hi. This was very nicely written. I certainly understand that thinking regarding the big picture.

However, IMO, the SAT adds another variable for contextualization of these inequalities in the American education system, regardless of if the SAT itself is unequal.

Structural inequality in higher education is a whole different ballgame, and is much more complex. As someone who went to a public college, and then got to see what life was like at Ye Olde Ivy colleges and schools like Stanford/Berkeley, it's pretty apparent that there were some structural decisions from the top down that facilitated that success outside of even the economic differential between schools/programs.

Very tough things worth thinking about. I don't think that people treat standardized testing as some all telling oracle, and if they do, I believe that they're mistaken. I remember that our school offered something called the PLAN? which was like the PSAT for the ACT. The career advice it gave me based on my results was that I'd be good at landscape work.

I've never defined myself by my test taking capabilities but I will admit I always felt a little affronted upon reading everything from the movements that seek to de-legitimize all standardized testing. I felt that something I specifically chose to gamify and study for was being increasingly seen as a negative signal.

Life is tough man. I hope people succeed regardless of if they even go to college or not. With that in mind, I also hope that perhaps there can be a cultural shift that facilitates scoring better on aptitude testing because perhaps that may be a signal about our society, even if that is not a perfect signal.

If every college is excellent, none of them are.

I get that we should be raising standards across the board whenever possible. Education is extremely valuable and I'd like more people to be more educated. But there is always going to be a continuum of prestige, educational value, intelligence of students, etc. among various colleges.

Success and life satisfaction (shouldn't be) zero sum.

Probably not. But there is always going to be a spectrum of variously qualified college students, and they are going to sort into a hierarchy of colleges. That will be true even if every college graduate has a life that would be considered "successful." Of course, success and satisfaction tend to be moving scales as well, and are often judged against peers. That's not about being zero sum. More education probably grows the pie. But only a limited number of people can go to the best colleges, unless you lower standards such that they are all mediocre.

I agree, but rankings are by their very nature zero sum.

If one person goes up, another goes down unless they are exactly equal. That level of equality is something I think impossible to achieve and even if we did, humans would find some other way to rank people.

But compared to the past, we can make it better. There is no reason why the 50th percentile today cannot be equal to the 60th percentile of yesteryear.