Why can’t those guys lighten up

Every high school student has to go through it: the four hour long ordeal that drains the life out of you. That’s right the dreaded SAT. To make things worse, this past year College Board created a new policy called “Score Choice.”

According to the masterminds working at College Board, Score Choice is supposed to lower student stress and improve the test-day experience. Score Choice gives students the option to choose the SAT scores by test date. This allows students to submit their best score from a list of all the SATs they have taken. But there’s one problem, it mainly benefits people who don’t bother putting enough effort into studying.

Imagine spending all summer studying and prepping for the SAT in October while your best friend has been slacking off sleeping their life away. On your first try, you score a 2360 while your friend ends up taking the test eight times and scoring a 2400. Score Choice lets him send in his 2400 while you’re left a little bit short.

Colleges who accept Score Choice don’t get to see the long list of test scores your friend has; they only see what’s sent in. While it’s great that your friend got a 2400, what happens when the same thing happens for thousands of other students? SAT scores wouldn’t really matter as much would they?

The fact of the matter is that there are some students who work extremely hard to get the scores they want while there are others who just get lucky. The point of SATs are to see how prepared an individual is to attend college. What doesn’t make sense to me is seeing somebody who has taken eight SATs, because it doesn’t really strike me that the student is prepared for life outside of high school.

Needless to say, Score Choice is detrimental to students solely because of the fact that the numbers don’t add up. Although some people may benefit from this policy, ultimately there will be a majority of people who wind up taking the SAT more times thinking that there will always be a next time to do better.

Taking the test dozens of times does not show how prepared a student is for college, it just means they have $40 to toss around and a lot of time on their hands. I think College Board should limit the number of times a student can take the SAT so that they are more inclined to do better the first time. Needless to say, College Board is the best at finding ways to make our lives harder.