re: Report: TOPS mostly benefits students from white, affluent families

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the "valedictorian/4.0" board congratulating the students and it listed their ACTs and the highest was like 21 (and the rest were sub-20). it was then that i learned the true different in output

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But, but some people are just bad test takers!!

I hear that shite all the time, and it is hardly ever true. By and large, the most intelligent classmates I had also scored very well on the ACT. Granted, there were some people who did poorly on the ACT but had great GPAs, and vice versa, and that could usually be explained by work ethic, not intelligence - for instance, I had the highest ACT score in my class but I was barely inside of the 70th percentile for our class GPA.

Hard working students of average intelligence usually end up with nice GPAs and mediocre ACT scores. It has nothing to do with "test anxiety" or whatever handicap they want to claim. That doesn't mean they should be any less respected - if anything, I appreciate those hard workers now that I'm out of school and realize exactly how lazy I was at the time - but smart, intelligent people will do well on the ACT, period.