An SAT-like standardized test is being prepared for about 200 colleges across the U.S., only it will be an exit test and not one for entry, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+) will arrive next spring and it aims to provide potential employers with more to examine in a student than a grade-point average. Various companies believe more is needed to gauge a recent graduate's skills than college credentials and grades alone.

"The students will be able to use it to go out and market themselves," said David Pate, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at St. John Fisher College, a small liberal-arts school near Rochester, N.Y. "[CLA+] provides an objective, benchmarked report card for critical thinking skills."

Some proponents for the test have long thought graduates needed more than a degree and a grade-point average to prove their eligibility for the workforce.

"For too long, colleges and universities have said to the American public, to students and their parents, 'Trust us, we're professional. If we say that you're learning and we give you a diploma it means you're prepared,'" said Michael Poliakoff, vice president of policy for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. "But that's not true."

The CLA+ test was developed by Aid to Education, a New York-based nonprofit, and will be voluntary at about 200 schools next spring. Some California and Texas state school systems have signed up for it, as have several small liberal arts schools, Reuters reported.

"It's another set of information that employers can use to review the applicant," Robert Keeley, director of assessment services at the Council for Aid to Education, told Reuters. "We're looking to equip students to share their scores more readily than they have in the past."

The test also aligns, but is not affiliated with President Barack Obama's detailed proposal to lower college costs. He proposed colleges be rated before the 2015 academic year so families can get the best value for their money when seeking a school.

"A dirty secret about higher education for a very long while is, we've had no particularly good ways of knowing the most important thing, and that is whether students are learning," said Douglas Bennett, a Council for Aid to Education board member and emeritus professor of politics at Earlham College in Indiana. "Partly that's been because we didn't have the right, clever ideas to figure out how to do that."