Where you go to school still greatly affects how well you are likely to do on standardised tests. Better schools can easily bump students up 2 or 3 grades compared to poorer schools. To some extent this will also improve students’ ability to complete degree courses, but there’s also a great extent to which this is just teaching students how to pass standardised tests well. It’s true that truly excellent students will do well regardless of school, but you’ll end up with mostly average students from good schools.
Universities in the UK use A-level results (which are mostly based on standardised tests), but will sometimes compensate (lower) the required grade based on a students school and background. Which IMO works out fairer in practice.
You seem to be saying that "better schools" (mostly) don't actually select or train better students, but (mostly) merely train them to pass standardized tests better. Is there any evidence or reason to believe this?
With all due respect, that's not right. Any student attending a prep school from kindergarten, or otherwise very early, will have their development accelerated as compared to a child who attends an average school. The effect compounds with each year.
This doesn't somewhat improve college performance. It creates a markedly different brain and habits. An effect that declines as entrance into such a school system becomes later. Middle school being exceptionally late. High school being so late so as to have a marginal effect if any. Kindergarten being optimal.
Prep schools, generally speaking, only give basic test instruction for college entrance exams. Other standardized testing is the same or even less than normal schools. Cram-course style instruction is generally private and paid for privately by any given family. In my experience, the vast majority of prep school students don't seek it. This is in the United States.
>> truly excellent students will do well regardless of school
Not if they go to a school that doesn't have the prerequisites for college/university. Not if the school is so poorly-resourced that they don't have access to the study material, or even access to take the standardized tests they need. Not if the teachers are jerks. Go luck getting into a university science program if your highschool didn't teach science.
(Yes, that is a thing even in the US. Many religious schools do not teach what we who read HN would call "science", which makes university applications tricky.)
> Where you go to school still greatly affects how well you are likely to do on standardised tests. Better schools can easily bump students up 2 or 3 grades compared to poorer schools...
Neither SAT nor ACT are measured in "grades", so it's not clear what you mean to say here.
Universities in the UK use A-level results (which are mostly based on standardised tests), but will sometimes compensate (lower) the required grade based on a students school and background. Which IMO works out fairer in practice.