As the University"s class of 2005 gears up to begin classes in September, many older University students are shelling out large chunks of change for graduate school admissions test preparatory classes. For the right price, students are guaranteed higher scores on the LSAT, MCAT, GMAT and others.

Green though they may be, members of this year"s freshman class are no strangers to life-altering standardized tests, the stress they cause or the pricey prep classes that promise results. They"ve just been through what is perhaps the most rigorous and relentless battery of standardized tests they will ever have to endure. Most Michigan high school students take one or more of the following: The ACT, DAT, SAT, SAT II, MEAP and a host of Advanced Placement tests, all in hopes of securing admission to prestigious universities.

While these four years of near-constant testing do prove useful when it comes time to fill out college applications, even high school students usually realize the pointlessness of these exams they understand that good scores alone don"t make them smart. Despite the tremendous weight given them by institutions of higher learning, standardized tests have long proven to be poor indicators of intelligence.

The claim that these tests can accurately measure the depth of one"s intellect in a few hours is dubious at best. Furthermore, studies conducted on the most widely used standardized tests have consistently revealed the tests" biases. For example, Princeton Review Executive Director Jay Rosner found that 575 of the 580 questions on the 1988-89 SAT displayed "white preference." A study conducted by Testing for Public director David White found a wide gap between the scores of students from different ethnic backgrounds with similar grade point averages.

More recently, the College Board released SAT statistics from the college-bound seniors in the year 2000. White students significantly out-scored black students, Latino students, Native American students and students of other minority groups. On average, males scored higher than females.

Another serious problem caused by standardized testing is that it places pressure on individual school districts and teachers to produce students with impressive scores. In Michigan, this problem became widespread in the mid-1990s when the state revamped the high school MEAP (formerly HSPT) test some districts now require MEAP preparatory activities in every class during the weeks leading up to the test.

There is something tragically wrong with a system that forces teachers to teach students how to pass a specific test rather than how to apply knowledge in the real world. Educators should take this as a giant red flag that the testing has gone too far.

More than 280 universities across the country have done just that by reducing or eliminating the role of the SAT and/or the ACT in their undergraduate admissions requirements. The University is not one of them. All schools and departments at the University from the Business School to the Medical School should follow the lead of these 280 schools and take a stand against standardized tests.

It"s hard to pin down the worst aspect of these tests. Is it their inherent ethnic prejudices and gender biases? Is it the power that allows them to overtake a teacher"s curriculum for days or even weeks? Is it the undue stress they cause students, parents and educators? Universities should not continue to use these tests simply because they provide convenient quantitative data.