The SAT is billed as a great way to find out how prepared students are for college. If that's true, recent changes to its format offer an unflattering assessment of the country's aspiring scholars.

Colleges and universities have long used standardized tests to filter applicants. The SAT, published by the nonprofit College Board, was for decades considered the pre-eminent one. A nationwide industry arose to help kids prepare for the test and boost their chances of acceptance to a good school. The SAT's influence over American education was hard to overstate.

Then the pandemic hit. As in-person exams became impractical, hundreds of schools dropped their testing requirements. The SAT and its main........

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