The problem with testing isn't that it's inaccurate, but that it's a poor tool for the problem that it's being used to solve. You can't express "likelihood of success in college" in one number. Looking back on my time in college, the idea that my success could be predicted by my knowledge of geometry and vocabulary words is laughable.

If there was a test that could accurately predict someone's chances of "success", be it SAT or IQ test, it would be used by everyone for everything. Billion dollar companies would be giving CEOs a version of that test before hiring them. A near perfect SAT score is noteworthy personal trivia, but other than that it loses all meaning as soon as someone steps on campus.

Schools with strong brands use tests because they have way more applicants than they can properly review. Standardized testing is made necessary by scale, not predictive accuracy. I'm sure that anyone who has worked in college admissions for years has a very clear picture of what a successful student looks like. But there doesn't seem to be a way to quantify and codify that knowledge. And there likely wouldn't be time to apply it to tens of thousands of people in a few months anyway. So, standardized testing is what we have until someone comes up with something better.