The college application process is stress-filled at every stage. From worries about how a particular test will affect GPA to cramming in as many extracurricular as possible, college hangs above high schoolers heads on a daily basis. But one aspect in particular causes a great deal of anxiety: standardized tests, like the SAT. No other single part of a resume holds such disproportionate weight as the standardized test; while GPA is the culmination of years of work, an SAT score is the result of a single Saturday morning. This makes the test very high stakes, where just a few mistakes will ruin your score, and by extension, your entire college resume. What makes it even worse is that the test is absolutely meaningless.  

When the SAT was first introduced in 1926, it was an acronym for “Scholastic Aptitude Test.” In 1990, the name was changed to “Scholastic Assessment Test,” since the College Board was unsure as to if the test actually measured the intelligence of the test taker. Now, SAT stands for nothing – not as an acronym, since it can’t rightly claim to assess intelligence, and not as an established test, since even the president of the College Board can defend it. David Coleman, the president of the College Board says the SAT is “filled with unproductive anxiety” and “artificial obstacles.” Of course, these are things test takers and educators have been saying for years – studies have shown that those who do well on the SAT don’t necessarily do well later in life, or even the next few years at college. Doing well on the SAT proves nothing more than ability to do well on the SAT. So, in short, researchers, students, and even the creators of the SAT all agree that the test is worthless. So why do we take it?

When David Coleman and the College Board admitted the absurdity of their test, it sadly wasn’t to retire the test. Instead, it was as an announcement of a plan to make a new test by the fall of 2015. Current sophomores and juniors will continue to take the archaic old test and current seniors were accepted into colleges on the pretense of the old test. But why should the test in its current form continue to be administered if absolutely nobody believes in its validity? However, it would be a mistake to just take the ACT, or to wait for the new SAT. These standardized tests are nothing more than a scam to drain money from college bound students. Whether it’s from the fees required to take the test or from the classes and books to prepare for it, the standardized test industry is a goldmine, where a neat profit can be made off the anxiety of high schoolers. With this amount of exploitation going on, it’s frankly a disgrace that America’s universities still require standardized test scores for admission, further perpetuating the plague on our educational system. So while it should be applauded that the College Board recognizes the SAT for the fraud that it is, the answer is not a new test. The answer is the end to standardized tests.