[jcfields]

It's been a while since I've taken the ACT or SAT, but it seems unnecessary to me to allow graphing calculators at all. I'm pretty sure you can get through any 4-year engineering program without ever using more than a good scientific calculator on an exam (and that's all you're allowed to use on the FE/PE exams), so it ought to be more than sufficient for high school algebra or trig.

I would actually take it a step further and say that graphing calculators aren't even that useful in instruction, especially now that students all have computers and can run Desmos, MatLab, or whatever. I had a TI-86 in high school, and the only class in which I found it indispensable was A.P. Statistics. Maybe I'm being narrow-minded, but I always thought those things were a bit silly and gimmicky and sort of resented that my parents had to buy me one for school.

[G4E]

I don't know if it is common, but that's exactly what my engineering school did : no graphical calculator allowed through all the cursus. They would provide a "basic+ calculator" (a basic calculator with square, square root, and some "advanced" math but not a lot) to each test and you'll have to deal with that.

I hated it while in school, but retrospectively i think it was a pretty good idea actually :)