When you are an international student and that you plan to pursue your study in the US – apart from getting to know about American’s culture and people’s way of living – you most importantly need to learn about how US education works as well.

In fact, the US remains among the best countries providing top-quality education according to the 2018 Education rankings of Global Partnership for Education. Similarly, the US is at the number one spot in terms of education across the world, according to the 2020 Best Countries Report. These explain the increase in number of international students pouring into the United States. It has even been showed that the US has the world’s largest international student population, with more than one million students choosing to broaden their education in the US and dwell in.

Before deciding to enroll in any US colleges, international students need to know first that there is what is called “standardized test” which is mandatory, unless it is not among the requirements of the college they apply for – as it really depends on colleges’ admission requirements. Yet most of the time, US colleges, especially prestigious ones, demand a standardized testing as the first entrance examination, which is not only meant for international students but also for American students. A standardized test in US education is a test that is given to students and is scored in a consistent or “standard” manner. The test questions, the conditions of administering, and the scoring procedures are consistent or the same for all students. In some US primary schools, pupils have already taken standardized tests; but once they finish high school and attend college or university, they are free to choose whether they want to take college-admissions tests or not. By contrast, for an international student to be selected and be able to enroll in a college program, he or she is required to take the admission tests and needs to be assessed if he/she meets the requirements.

Indeed, apart from the College-admissions tests, there are other different types of standardized tests which include:

• The Achievement tests, consisting of measuring the knowledge and skills students learn at school or to determine the academic performance throughout the learning process.
• The Aptitude tests, when evaluating a student’s ability to succeed in an intellectual or physical field or another specific one, like assessing mathematical ability or language proficiency for instance.
• The International-comparison tests which are about monitoring achievement trends in individual countries through comparing educational performance across countries. An example of international-comparison tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
• The Psychological tests – IQ tests – are tests sometimes used to identify students with learning disabilities to measure their cognitive and mental abilities, as well as their emotional, developmental, and social features.

Some of the College-admissions tests in the US

There are different tests required to be admitted in some US colleges:

• SAT, which stands for Scholastic Assessment Test and originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, is a standardized test intended to assess student’s readiness for college.
• ACT, originally an abbreviation for American College Testing, is a standardized test with the purpose to evaluate high school students’ general knowledge of specific skills areas like English, mathematics, social studies, and natural sciences which were renamed later the Science Reasoning test. Both SAT and ACT are designed to assess students’ academic readiness for higher education.
• Graduate Record Examinations or GRE, a standardized test for graduate school that aims to measure verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning or mathematics, analytical writing and critical thinking skills.
• Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) is a standardized test which consists of four sections to assess graduate students who especially enroll in a graduate management program such as an MBA program. The four sections include Verbal Reasoning skill, Quantitative Reasoning skill, Integrated Reasoning skill and Analytical Writing skill.

Sources: Study in the USA / The glossary of Education Reform