SAT Scores are Only a Number

Coming in April the stress of the SATs is coming up for juniors in high school. This test is a standardized test to determine students’ understanding of English and Math. With this test, there has been a lot of preparation for having PSATs before the actual test, even before high school there have been standardized testing for both English and Math.

Having a test measuring students’ skill levels is a stressful test while most students do not do well under pressure nor do students think of this as an accurate result of how they are as a student.

 “I feel like it’s unrealistic there are a lot of smart people that don’t like doing tests so yeah I don’t think it really shows the type of student you are. Maybe sometimes they are, for me I don’t think they’re beneficial because I’m not really good at testing, but I know I’m a good student,” said senior Alberto Luevano. 

Although getting a high score on the SAT is an accomplishment, most people show their understanding and abilities through their grades and the classes they take. Grades and GPAs show more on how students perform in learning and understanding, the SATs show memorization whereas most practice tests are similar in context. 

The SATs originally came from a test used to determine the IQ of people in the army. This test was used to show the intelligence of someone rather than right now where it is used to show a student’s level in where they are at. If the test was originally created to determine the intelligence of a person, the scores student’s are getting back will poorly reflect on them as a student. Getting a low score will cause people to think badly of themselves even though they do well in other areas of school. 

Throughout the years’ several colleges have changed their requirements for taking the SATs where they do not look at scores as much anymore compared to other extracurriculars and grades. This especially happened due to COVID, where the junior class of 2020 did not take the SATs. This change is beneficial to showing the SATs shouldn’t be a way to get into colleges.

Although several colleges do not look at scores anymore there are still several that do. So if a student is trying to get into schools with a lower acceptance rate such as UC Berkeley, John Hopkins University, Yale University, etc. The SATs are required and can be beneficial for the student as an alternative.

“It depends on what school you want to go to because teachers talk about it a lot how some schools do. Like the school I personally want to go to like Boulder doesn’t look at SAT scores, so it personally doesn’t affect me, but in case I don’t get accepted or something it would be helpful,” said junior Jonathan Garcia

As for the actual SAT test, all students get the same test, which is good because it is a fair chance for students, but this can also be a downside while schools and students have different accessibility to studying and resources to get a good score. 

“…Everyone has the same test, the only reason it’s biased is because of school funding, but that’s a different issue it doesn’t have to do with standardized testing,” said junior Jose Caraveo. 

Overall, SATs are tests to determine a student’s capability to study rather than how they perform as students in paying attention or learning in general. The test itself puts pressure on students because it is timed causing pressure on a student to try and do their best in a short amount of time.