Be more than your SAT score

If you were to liken the four yours of high school to America’s brief novella of a history, taking the SAT or ACT could comfortably be compared to a teen’s Vietnam.

Like Vietnam, the grueling preparation and test taking is like a hopeless and pointless war that fails to accomplish much beyond stressing puberty-ridden teenagers halfway to the grave.

But don’t take my word for it. Celebrity personality Conan O’Brien once said, “It has taken 20 years to forget the trauma of that damned test, and looking up my scores would be like going back to Vietnam.”

Defenders of the SAT and ACT have long championed the tests’ devotion to an elevated academic standard and its supposed predictability of both collegiate and career success. They see the SAT as a logistical ruler to place up against any John or Jane Doe applicant.

But what does that matter when you consider the limited access to educational resources and opportunity some lower income students may face?

Trust fund babies and prep school Gossip Girls can throw money at tutors to help them perform exactly to the typicality of the SAT and ACT.

It’s education and capitalism working hand in hand to favor the top percentiles. The level of opportunity is heavily skewed.

Students may choose not to apply to their top-choice schools because they don’t believe their test scores are high enough, or worse, they may not choose to apply to college at all.

While a healthy dose of pressure is necessary, where is the line between positive nerves and fear tactics?

It’s drastically important to understand  test scores are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to a college application. Colleges consider everything on your application, including your grades, extracurricular activities, class performance and personal statements.

Colleges are seeking humans, not numbers. And if a college is seeking numbers and not your social and academic contribution to their campus, you probably shouldn’t want to go there.

Research has also shown that people who score low on the SAT will score high on their next go around purely by chance.

There’s no tried and true science to it. You can prep and prep and prep all you want, but scores will rarely jump more than 20 points.

Though the number of students taking the SAT has increased annually for the last seven decades, more colleges than ever are making SAT or ACT test scores optional on college applications. This showcases a generation of students determined, even at their own sanity, to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crop.

But in the end, it’s just a number. And there will never be any clean-cut way to measure your intelligence.

It sounds like the end of a Disney cartoon, but if you’ve worked hard and tried your best, why let a silly number control your outlook on your future?

­— wdmcdona@indiana.edu