SAT: Legalized Cheating

In 1978 I took the SAT and I still remember my fear and trepidation. I was a B and C student.  If I happened to manage an A, it was in band, chorus or drama. I was very smart but I was not challenged or interested in academics.  I was a musician and I had been studying to be an opera singer since I was in the 7^th grade.  However, if I was to go to college to study music, I had to take the SAT.  I used to make the joke that I think they gave me points for showing up and signing my name.  My parents were fairly well-off and the colleges I went to readily accepted my parents’ quarterly tuition checks. It really did not have much to do with my grades or SAT score; it had more to do with my parents’ ability to write a check.  I have always thought that the SAT was useless and I think that it is even more so today.

I know some very smart young people who made very good grades through high school take on the extra burden of taking a course to make a better grade on the SAT.  Their parents spent a lot of money on test prep.  The students learned how to pass a test.  They did not learn a great skill.  Murray in his essay states that "The substitution of an achievement test for the SAT will put a spotlight on the quality of the local high school’s curriculum”.  I think it is important for a freshman college student to have knowledge of good old-fashioned reading, writing and arithmetic instead of wasting time learning to legally cheat on a test.  Actually knowing facts about history, math and science and being able to write coherently in the English language is a much more important skill than being taught to take shortcuts to gain your achievements.  If some small but important schools would just start the ball rolling to not require the SAT, but require students to be well rounded and good students, it will make a difference.  There are more important things in life than worrying about a test score.  -- Jane Adamson-Merrill

The SAT was not created in the spirit of making people comfortable. The SAT was created to be a representation of what students learn while in high school. They were created so that colleges can        hold aspiring students to in one standard of learning in the midst of a democratic society.  People are not required to take the SAT, it's purely optional.  Some colleges don't even require SAT. Students should be well prepared for the test that THEY desire to take. There are means out there in which students can study and properly prepare for the SAT.  Not knowing the information needed to pass the standardized test is truly irrelevant to the test and blatantly related to the student who desires , but is unprepared to take the test. Making an argument based off of one's inability to study, concluding that the test is the source of the problem, is utterly fallacious.
-Ryan Anthony Gates