Fortunately, anxieties such as this might become a thing of the past when it comes to making the grade.

During the past decade, many colleges, including the University of Southern California, have begun developing new noncognitive assessments to measure certain skills — such as leadership or the ability to meet goals — that ordinary tests do not.

Typically in the form of self-evaluations and short essays, these new methods attempt to do more than evaluate how much information a student knows, but rather how they learned it.

However difficult imagining this new system for evaluating intelligence on a collegiate level might be, when you consider the opportunities it presents for certain students, it’s hard not to be supportive of these colleges’ aim.

As technology develops, it’s becoming possible to more accurately measure intelligence, or what it means to be intelligent, using more than just performance-based testing.

Present-day college admission officers want to know more about applicants besides past grades, and universities always have expected their students to be motivated, sharp-witted and hungry for new challenges.

Standardized test scores and GPAs might be able to highlight a portion of an applicant’s talents or work habits, but they do not predict his or her long-term potential.

For years, the concept of evaluating a student’s potential for success based on anything other than their academic past was ignored by university admission officers— not because it was thought of as being less important, but because it was more difficult and less understood.

Because of modern studies, however, this argument slowly is losing weight.

Neuroscience studies now support the use of noncognitive assessments to gauge applicant intelligence and suggest the attributes demonstrated are intertwined with those found using traditional testing.

Although noncognitive methods offer admission offices contemporary ways to evaluate college applicants, these practices should not become new barriers where students feel they must excel.

Nearly 3 million SAT exams were administered in the 2011-12 school year, bringing with them a great burden of stress on each individual that participated.

As key of a role as non-academic skills, such as leadership, should hold when conducting an intellectual assessment, making sure the students colleges accept possess a balance of both should be the ultimate goal of admission officers.