Come pay $60 to take a five-hour test in a random class room that will determine if you’re smart enough to go to college!
Pay only $500 an hour for the best strategy-teaching tutor in town!
Don’t worry, it’ll be easy if you have a large amount of pointless knowledge on irrelevant subjects!
This test is none other than the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).
The SAT has been around since 1926 and is taken by teenagers across the country.
It consists of four basic sections consisting of English, reading, and two sections of math, with some versions being followed by a timed essay.
On the College Board website, it costs $60 to take the SAT with the essay. Now multiply that by 1.6 million students, and around 96 million dollars is spent on taking the SAT a year.
Gaston Caperton, the president of College Board since 1999, has stated that College Board is a non-profit organization and all income goes back into their programs and services.
I really wonder what programs those 96 million dollars fund.
The price of taking multiple standardized tests is added to the other expenses of college applications, registration fees, college tuition, and SAT tutors.
My parents wanted me to do well on the SAT, but they also didn’t have thousands of dollars to drop on a tutor.
According to The New York Times, SAT tutors can charge up to $1000 an hour and they usually aren’t worth it.
Everyone I have spoken to about tutors always talk about learning strategies and ways to finish quickly. How does learning strategies to select the correct answers and get through each section with time to spare actually show what you know?
It doesn’t.
The SAT is necessary for any student looking to attend UC schools, Ivy Leagues, private colleges, and even public state schools.
However, the test is not in the students’ favor.
Not only does this standardized test measure your college “readiness,” but it also times how quickly you can prove your readiness.
Not to mention, everyone takes the same test, even though students are in a variety of different level math and English classes.
The SAT also tests students on irrelevant topics. Reading articles and answering questions about the extinction of dinosaurs will not help students in the future, and it is not relevant to what they are actually learning in school.
Between the unrelated topics and the confusing wording of questions, it seems as if the college board wants students to fail.
Every human’s brain is different. We all process information differently. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. How can one test determine your intelligence by having you work at an unrealistic pace on topics that are not relevant to what you are learning in school or what you are actually interested in for your future?
