Almost every high school student is familiar with the acronym: SAT. Those three small letters can conjure up strong emotions like: stress, anxiety, and tension. Teenagers across the nation and around the globe take this test on early Saturday mornings while clutching their number two pencils and electronic calculators.

The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test designed to determine how well prepared a student is for college-level academics. It is also a common comparison tool used among colleges to measure students against each other. In The Official Study Guide for all SAT Subject Tests, College Board states “SAT scores allow admissions staff to compare your college readiness with other students on a standardized scale.”

However, the amount of stress that is put on a student’s SAT score is quickly turning into an unhealthy obsession. Students Against Testing, also SAT, is a “force against the score-obsessed education machine known as standardized testing.” On Nomoretests.com, the Students Against Testing group provides a list of “10 Reasons to oppose High-Stakes Testing”. In this list, the SAT group gives reasons which include how standardized tests stop learning, are big businesses, are inaccurate and insecure, and how they place too much emphasis on one single examination.

Nevertheless, proponents of the SAT would argue that there needs to be some way of measuring students and the SAT provides an accurate measurement of a student’s readiness for college.

College Board is the main administrator of the SAT test. Nancy Viggiano, a staff member at College Board, stands by the validity of SAT scores by stating “A study by Hezlett et al. (2001) found that the SAT is a valid predictor of first-year college grade point average.”

However, despite the supposed importance of the SAT, College Board also states that the SAT does not test any innate ability nor the knowledge acquired through schooling. Instead, the SAT measures what students should know through their years at school.

Students and parents funnel millions of dollars into preparing for the SAT by purchasing SAT books, attending after-school SAT classes, taking practices tests, getting tutors, and using CD-Roms that try and teach the ‘tricks’ of acing the SAT exam.

Students Against Testing declares, “Tests are created, printed, distributed, and scored by private, quick-profiting corporations like College Board.”

There were nearly 1.5 million students who took the SAT in 2007; displaying the amount of importance the SAT test has among students, teachers, and admissions officers. However, the SAT test tells little to nothing about the student to an admissions officer. It is only a standardized ‘yard-stick’ that shows how many questions a student can get correct in a certain amount of time.

Alexander Chuang, in his article, Is the SAT a Fair Test?, states “No one test truly measures someone’s intellectual and economic future.” Viggiano defends the SAT by declaring, “...the fact is that grade inflation is an increasingly noticeable issue—making it more important than ever to also have a standardized admissions test score.”



No matter what your position is on this test. There is no doubt that it will continue to be required by many colleges and universities. However, as Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”