April is the month that every junior dreads; it’s the month of standardized testing. You can enjoy your spring break and then right when you get back testing begins. Teachers spend weeks upon weeks trying to prepare students for these tests, time that could be spent preparing students for college and useful life skills. Instead, a student’s college acceptance is highly reliable on their SAT score.
“I feel like standardized tests are over hyped. The anxiety of having to do well to get into a good college is overbearing, when really the score doesn’t mean that much. I feel like colleges tend to look more at an approved GPA than one test score to decide if you’re admitted or not. Of course they’re going to look at the score and if it’s absolutely terrible they’re going to question it. But testing anxiety has to be taken into account as well,” said junior Karli Little.
The SAT contains a reading, math, and writing section. It is a long and anxiety-ridden day for most juniors. Throughout the year, they are pressured to study and prepare, and the amount of importance placed on this test is huge. When you look into a college you get their admittance stats, the two main components being your GPA and SAT/ACT score. But which of these is more important?
“They have too much weight in school but for most colleges they don’t care as much. I wouldn’t encourage them to put more weight on it but the amount [the SAT] has is good,” said senior Madison Doonan.
The SAT can not measure how a student will succeed in college, it’s only a measure of how much you studied and memorized different facts instead of learning actual skill. Some students haven’t even taken all of the classes they need such as Algebra II in order to understand a good portion of the test.
“I do think that SAT scores have too much weight. Everyone is good at different things and just because you’re not good at what the SAT tests for doesn’t mean you’re not smart and won’t succeed in college,” said senior Emma Fergusson.
So why are we spending so much time and energy on a single test, why are we letting this single test take up so much time and determine our future?