TESTING: The SAT does not evaluate how “intelligent” a person is, yet students still endlessly stress over studying and taking the exam.
By Natalie Vargas, Staff Writer
The SAT is the infamous college-readiness exam that is known to cause an immense amount of stress for high school students. In today’s society, standardized testing is not an accurate enough way to measure a student’s academic abilities. People have been saying for years that a numerical value cannot measure someone’s intelligence, so why do colleges still require students to take the SAT? The stress that a student develops while preparing for the SAT is not worth a score that most students are not even proud of. Even if the SAT is not the only factor toward the final college acceptance or rejection, why do tutoring programs focus on students getting the best score possible?
There are many different curriculums that vary from state to state or from district to district for both math and language, so how can the college board determine what they believe every junior and senior in high school knows? Additionally, due to many states implementing Common Core and integrated math, many students are “behind,” in terms of the SAT, because the math portion of the test include higher level math such as Pre-Calculus. If an average student took Math 1 or Integrated Math 1 their freshman year in high school, then they would not reach Pre-Calculus until their senior year in high school. Moreover, common core and integrated math are a whole other issue when taking the math section of the SAT because in common core, teachers are free to teach at their desired pace. This means students in a different area of the country could be learning more or less material than other students, although they are all taking the same level math class. Likewise, charter and private schools are not state owned and do not have to abide by the rules set by the state. This lets those schools choose to whether or not to teach Common Core. The real question is whether the students exposed to Common Core have an advantage in the math section or the SAT or vice versa?
Many students feel obligated to search for tutors to try and receive a higher score on the SAT, but some students cannot meet the financial burden of hiring a tutor or participating in a preparatory SAT class. Those students are expected to study as hard as they can and not get too disappointed when they receive a mediocre score. On the other hand, some people may become unfocused in the testing room and not showcase their skills to the best of their ability. There are even the handful of students that are in the top 20% of their class GPA-wise, but only obtain a basic score. The real problem is that students pressure themselves excessively unless they receive a “perfect” score, because that is what they think colleges want. However, this is not the case, as University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has an 18% acceptance rate, but students who have a 4.00 GPA and a perfect 1600 on the SAT, only have a 26% chance of acceptance into the university. “I received a 1050 on the SAT and had a 3.8 GPA, but still managed to get into San Diego State University, even though they have a 35% acceptance rate,” California Baptist University (CBU) freshman, Kristen Vargas, said. In reality, a SAT score cannot be the only deciding factor when a college decides to accept or reject a student, yet, the College Board still relentlessly continues to emphasize how important the SAT is to someone’s future.
The amount of time students stress about taking the SAT or receiving scores is ridiculous compared to how much it factors into being apart of a college’s decision. A math and english test will never be able to quantify the size of someone’s creativity or intelligence someone has in various subjects. Even though taking the SAT is required in order to apply to most four year universities, students should not worry if their score is not “perfect” because the SAT is not the only deciding element in whether someone gets accepted into their dream college.