The crux of many high school careers is being accepted into college. Ideally, students who work the hardest will find themselves at the most prestigious of universities. But the factors used to determine who is Ivy-League material and who is not are changing.

Impressive scores on standardized tests are no longer a sure sign that students will be among the ranks at their dream university, and perhaps this is for the best.

Across-the-board methods of assessing student skills are necessary in some cases. Many private universities are now doing away with standardized test scores altogether in favor of interviews, essays and other more personal and in-depth methods.

But not every college has the capacities to have one-on-one interaction with prospective students, and larger-scale methods are the only efficient way to look at hundreds or thousands of students wanting to enroll.

Do the ACT and SAT truly put students on an equal playing field, though?

Some argue that regional and cultural differences give unfair favor to some students and lead to minority students having lower scores.

However, the alternative of replacing tests administered at a national level poses problems as well. Rewriting tests for different cultural groups would pose the same problem of unfair bias, as would administering regional versions.

At Iowa State, in-state students who are in the top half of their class are generally accepted. Those in the lower half must take the ACT or SAT but need only attain a score of 20 on the ACT.

This mix-and-match method of weighing many factors, such as extracurricular activities, difficulty of courses taken and community service projects, is used at most universities so that no one element greatly outweighs the others.

editorialboard: Michelle Kann, Tim Paluch, Jocelyn Marcus, Zach Calef, Ruth Spangler, Cavan Reagan