Essay-T just becomes T

With preparing for college applications comes the inevitable stress of having to take the SAT. The length and difficulty of the test are things that most people have heard comments about. Those three letters bring in a whole new meaning to stress and worry.

Many of my friends have paid for expensive classes to prepare for the SAT in hopes of giving them a better chance to perform well on a test that seems to set the average student up for failure.

The College Board announced that it has decided to make adjustments to the SAT on Wednesday, March 5. The board announced that the test will have a scoring scale of 400-1,600, use simpler language, make the essay portion optional, and won’t penalize students for wrong answers! I used an essay writing service to get ready for this and now it’s become optional… These are only a few of the changes College Board has announced for the SAT. In addition to this, the board has decided that it will be teaming up with Khan Academy to create a practice test that will help students prepare for the SAT and make it more accessible to the students who come from low income families.

When I read all this information, I was thrilled! I was thrilled until I read that the new SAT will be administered in the spring of 2016! Then, I was devastated. There I was sitting in front of my computer soaking in all this new SAT information, feeling more confident about performing well on a test that I was sure I was going to do poorly on, when all my dreams shattered at the sight of four numbers, 2016.

While I won’t be enjoying the benefits of the new SAT, I can say that I am both happy and eternally jealous of the future generations of students. This new test is geared at helping students feel more comfortable with taking the test and assessing students in a more fair and relevant way according to what they’re actually learning in school.

For us juniors, we are stuck with the traditional SAT, and while we may not reap the benefits of an improved test, at least we can say we endured the “harder”  and “traditional” SAT. We are stuck learning to take the test, memorizing vocabulary that we are more than likely to never use again in our life, and stressing over the possibilities of essay prompts that can be given. The only thing to remember is that after those four hours of long difficult testing, in the end we are worth more than the score we receive on the SAT. The fact that we are all people with culture, love, experience, and knowledge is worth far, I assure you!