Illustration by Earl Larabee

They say the tests are ruining the educational landscape -- that they're causing students to study for nothing else. That more than Philosophy, Economics, and Politics, the new subjects of importance are SAT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, and MCAT. Many want to see them eliminated.

These opponents point to statistics like the amount of money people spend on preparation, $310 million a year by one count, as signs that the standardized-test mania has gone too far and that a return to the core values of education is warranted.

However, such logic fails to understand the purpose that they serve. Simply put, standardized tests serve one vital function – as providers of a means of comparison to admissions panels.

What makes them so valuable? Why can't admissions panels look at more important factors? Factors like grades, letters of recommendation, and extra-curricular activities? That's where the standardized part comes in. Without standardized tests, there is no way to compare students across the country. With GPA, for example, there's no way to tell whether the 3.6 from Northwestern is more impressive than the 3.6 from Virginia.

So standardized tests are good because they're standardized. But rather than complain, UA students should cheer this opportunity as they approach grad school rather than boo it. It's hard enough competing with students from big name schools like MIT and Princeton. With the GRE/MCAT/LSAT/GMAT to level the playing field, students can show that they're just as sharp as the Ivy-League trained type.

It's no different than students at lower end high schools wanting to have the SAT to show they have the same aptitude as students from the big name schools (for the Phoenix and Tucson crowd, those may be schools like Xavier, Brophy, Salpointe, and University).

But some charges are darker. The SAT, for instance, was recently restructured to heed charges by the head of the University of California system, who said that the SAT was unfair to minorities.

This is somewhat ironic, given that the SAT was created partially to weed out untalented rich whites and usher in a new "meritocracy," as The Economist calls it. George Bush got into Yale before the meritocracy took over, but after it did, his brother Jeb found himself at the University of Texas.

There are specific claims that the test is tailored to middle-class whites, but that calls for making the test tailored for all, rather than eliminating the test altogether.

Another major complaint is that students can take courses to do better on the test. Unfortunately, richer students will always be able to afford more test prep courses and materials than poorer ones, but that's easily preferable to rich students being judged solely on their snooty private schools versus an inner-city public school.

Ryan Johnson Columnist

Others say the amount of time students are forced, for competitive reasons, to study for the test, is the chief evil. The average student already spends 11 hours preparing for the SAT in high school, and then pre-med and pre-law students have to plan when to have their "MCAT/LSAT semester."

Some schools such as Sarah Lawrence no longer require the SAT for admission at all. The logic is that students spend too much time preparing for them, which takes away from more important academic activities.

But it seems that rather than trying to make the admissions process better, they're trying to send a message. In reality, standardized tests have never been more important in admission decisions. With rampant grade inflation (in which schools, in order to make their students look better, raise grades across the board a widespread trend that has removed grades' abilities to separate students), colleges, grad schools and the like don't know what to make of students' grades. There's even a term called "letter inflation," wherein letters of recommendation are exaggerated in an attempt to make students stick out.

Graduate schools know better. One online guide says that, in fact, a student's GRE score is the most important factor in admission decisions. Simply put, it's the best way to compare students across different schools and from different backgrounds.

Scholarships and even employers can also ask for them. With 53% of resumes containing false information according to the current best-seller "Freakonomics," employers need to find what's real.

To be sure, too much emphasis on standardized tests can be a bad thing. If a student thinks he needs a particular score to get into the grad school of his choice, and that score is unrealistic, his time may be better spent doing something else than on cramming for an extra 10 points.

But standardized tests serve their purpose, a vital one. Next time someone curses that he has to study for the GMAT so he doesn't have to settle for an online MBA from a bogus university, remember the role they plays.

Ryan Johnson is an economics and international studies junior who has more than slightly procrastinated on studying for grad school admissions tests. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.