For the majority of high school juniors across America, junior year is the most important year in their high school career. High School juniors know that this is the year they have to work the hardest and get the best grades that colleges want to see. With the pressure of taking national standardized tests like the SATs and the ACTs, students are constantly faced with the pressure of preparing themselves for these tests all year along with maintaining good grades in their academic classes.
The PSATs can help with the preparation, but they may take many students by surprise. Many students think: If the PSATs are this hard, then what will the SATs be like? The PSATs help students get ready for these overwhelmingly hard exams which are necessary for most college admissions across the United States. There are only a few colleges in the United States that don’t require a student to have taken the SATs and still be admitted.
While the total length of the SAT is 3 hours and 45 minutes, it only covers three subjects of testing: Critical Reading, Math, and Critical Writing. The SATs should cover a wider range of subjects, since English and math do not come easily to every student.
The Critical Reading section consists of two 25 minute sections where students use vocabulary words (that we barely know the meanings of) to complete sentences. Then, there are dull, endless readings that students practically have to skim over in order to answer the reading comprehension questions in time. There is also one 20 minute section of multiple choice questions. Often, colleges credit this as the “most important” section of the SATs, making many students wonder why useless vocab words and random readings are essential to their lives.
The Math section offers a broader spectrum of questions: algebra, geometry, and basic word problems. There are two 25 minute sections of multiple choice and short answer questions and one 20 minute section of only multiple choice. Calculators are only permitted for some of the math sections, but 25 minutes does not seem to be a sufficient amount of time for many students to finish using only mental math.
The Critical Writing section is the first part of the test. It is a five paragraph essay written in a 25 minute time span. What high school student can write a perfect, SAT-worthy, five paragraph essay in 25 minutes? Students essentially only have a maximum of five minutes to work on each paragraph. It seems that the SATs are setting students up for failure and not even giving them a chance to do well because they are too rushed for time. There is also a 25 and a 10 minute grammar section included in the Writing section. Some colleges choose to ignore this part of the test, which makes us wonder why we even take this test in the first place and why colleges choose to exclude this part from being looked at.
A student’s knowledge cannot be fully determined by one test, especially one that does not test a student’s knowledge on all of the topics they learn in high school. Why aren’t history and sciences included on the SATs? Not everyone who desires to go to college wants to major in English or mathematics. Colleges shouldn’t make SATs one of the first things they look at when deciding to accept a student. Colleges should focus more than they already do on GPA, class rank, and other aspects like sports and activities that students participate in.
The SATs simply should not be the main aspect that determines what college a student will attend. Some people are masters at taking overwhelming, standardized tests like the SATs, while others do not test well at all. The SATs have become the traditional way of accepting students to colleges, but they should not have this big of an impact.
