Work in progress

Surviving Standardization

Working title

An insider's guide to admissions testing's century of over-promising and under-delivering.

For nearly a century, admission testing has presented the approximations of psychology as the precision of physics. Akil Bello is writing the book that exposes what tests actually measure, how the industry operates, and what a hundred years of deceptive precision has cost American students. Part history, part insider analysis, part practical guide, the book aims to replace mythology and marketing with clarity that helps families, educators, and policymakers make better decisions.

Get notified when it's ready Follow the newsletter →

In Progress

Surviving
Standardization

Akil Bello

Why he's the one to write it

Thirty-plus years of testing expertise gained working with the students who struggle most, not the ones who need the least.

He has taken five versions of the SAT, three versions of the SHSAT, the GMAT, GRE, and two versions of the LSAT — "sport testing," registering for and taking official admission tests for research, not to get into school.

He founded a test prep company built for underserved communities, working with students from middle school entrance exams to graduate admissions. He served as Director of Equity and Access at The Princeton Review and Senior Director of Advocacy at FairTest. He guided both of his sons through the admissions testing process he has spent his career analyzing.

He knows where the arguments are data, and where they're marketing. The book is the accumulated evidence of thirty years of both.