Your eyes blink as your mind snaps back to reality and the standardized test sitting in front of you. The clock at the top is slowly ticking down, signaling the near end of the allowed 35 minutes. In the midst of reading a complicated passage during your test, you realize you lost your focus and must re-read it. 

This scenario has happened to me all three times that I have taken the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). As I’m trying to focus, my mind suddenly starts drifting to any other topic, mostly the pressure that I’m feeling due to the test in general. Thus, I continuously re-read the piece of writing from Charles Dickens in the 1800s, and suddenly I’m out of time. The test is submitted and I’m left wondering if I achieved the score that I needed. 

Juniors and seniors are required to take either the SAT or the American College Testing (ACT). High scores can result in merit-based scholarships, special awards and increased opportunities for college education. The pressure put on students to achieve high test scores can be unbearable. 

“I feel pressured to do good on the SAT because it almost serves as a prerequisite to get into a good college and it feels as like if I don’t have a good academic foundation with good standardized scores to compare to the rest of the students, I will not be given a chance to succeed,” Saanvi Amara ‘28 said.

These tests might be standard, but students are not. Every student has different academic strengths as well as set backs. Others have diagnosed disabilities. How can we all be subjected to take the same test when we are so different? These all factor into their test-taking abilities, yet nothing is different for them in terms of timing or test-taking. 

Emmory Casto ‘26 has taken the test multiple times in order to see if she could improve her score. 

 “I do not think standardized testing is a good show of anyone as a student. People can study for standardized tests, and the questions are so predictable, so really the test usually just depends on how much you reviewed for it,” Casto said. “Since our school is so competitive in our test scores, I think people got too caught up in just comparing themselves to others.”

In order to increase my opportunity to attend my dream school next year, I aimed to receive a merit-based scholarship. In order to be placed in this selection of students, I needed to score a 1350. After my first score was less than I needed, I started doing multiple forms of studying and tutoring. My Saturdays began with a three-hour class; my nights were full of practice problems. Despite my work, I couldn’t seem to improve my score to what I wanted.

Similar to me, students take part in various studying exercises leading up to the SAT. 

“I took this ACT prep class, it was on Sundays and was a few hours long. It covered the types of questions that would be on the ACT and how to answer them. I got a lot of practice through the class and the practice tests they gave us,” Cooper Linn ‘27 said. 

Standardized testing measures how students perform in Math and English compared to other students. A student who participates in theater is being compared to a student who plays Hockey. A Yearbook staff member is being compared to someone who is in HOSA. A student who wants to become an accountant is being compared to someone who’s not sure if college is the right decision. 

We are all too different to be compared to each other through one test. It’s time that the way students look at standardized testing scores is reframed. Progress and changes have been made to schools, leading them to be test-optional. My main goal in mind while I studied endlessly for my SAT was to qualify for a scholarship. I ended up getting a different scholarship that was double the one I was looking at, and they did not even take into account my SAT score. Test scores aren’t as important anymore; the student is. It’s not as much about what score you achieve, it’s who you are and what you do with the opportunities that you are given.