With such diversity in the quality and honesty of grading systems in secondary education, some sort of standardized test is required to help access the quality of an incoming student.
The old-style SAT was meant to measure your aptitude for learning, so concentrated a lot on deduction, logic, and problem solving. Since so much of education is memorization, discipline, and busy work, this was a nice balance. Colleges are much more interested in people with a lot of potential that aren't using it all, than they are people that are working hard to just get by. They offer a a much bigger potential payoff, and if they don't work out the college doesn't care it still got a few years tuition.
Besides jobs that I and a lot of other people consider interesting are a lot closer to a standardized test than a high school course. Think about it, do you want to spend you life :
remembering and following steps/procedures/rules
Solving unique problems using former experiences, general guidelines, and logic
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