Standardized tests

Today I was sitting in my SAT prep class which lasts for about 3.5 hours. As we were going over the proper strategies for the writing section, I couldn't help but think to myself that this was the most pointless activity. Why  do we need to take standardized tests in the first place? Why do colleges need one more thing to look at before they make their decision about who to except? At the beginning of the course, I was told that the SAT is more of an intelligence measure and the ACT measures what you have learned throughout school. I'm pretty sure that one could tell a lot about a persons intelligence from the levels of classes that they were taking and from the grades that they were receiving. Also don't the grades say a little bit about what on has learned in school? If a college wants to know how much you have learned throughout school, well it seems to me that the grades a student received would be a good indication of what a student has learned.

Why is there the need to standardize everything? Classes at different schools may not cover the exact same material so why does the go over the same material. It would seem to me that a test from a math class is a better indication of what a student has learned about geometry. That way the material on the test correlates to what has been going on inside of the classroom.

Finally I don't think that one test should be such a major factor in acceptance. Not everyone, including myself, tests very well and just because someone can't pick which sentence works the best in a paragraph, doesn't mean that they have no writing skills. As I was sitting in class I couldn't help but thinking that grades were the major deciding factor for colleges and the 3.5 hours sitting in a classroom going over grammar was really getting in the way of me doing homework.