OpED: Please Don't Take SAT Prep Courses
By Malaika Handa
When are you taking the SAT? What prep book did you buy? Are you taking a course? What were your scores? When I tell people at our international school that I plan to apply to American colleges, I am bombarded with these questions, usually asked in stressed out and panicked voices.
But most sophomores and juniors forget the SAT’s real purpose. It was not created to torture teens; it was created to compare the knowledge of students from different schools. Some people see it as redundant: we already take tests, exams, and receive semester grades, why do we need another score? But the way that teachers grade assignments varies from school to school; the SAT is standardized throughout the world.
American college admissions are interested in the general academic background of their applicants. Are they well-read? Do they have a large vocabulary? Can they understand implied messages? Can they make educated guesses? Are they problem solvers? These are all skills that one develops over a lifetime. It seems unfair that a single test score defines seventeen years of knowledge that a person has acquired, but there are so many people trying to apply to college that a quick comparison between applicants is necessary.
The SAT has to boil down all of the questions asked above into main sections: vocab, reading comprehension, sentence structure, math. While preparing for the SAT, teens intensely study seemingly random words and grammar rules so they can get a good score... but in doing so, they forget the entire purpose of the test. Colleges don’t care--in fact, no one in the world cares--about the SAT-specific tricks you are probably forcing yourself to memorize. What people care about is whether you are a well-rounded, knowledgeable person.
I believe that people who take intense SAT prep courses are essentially lying to the College Board. They fake their way through the test by earning a score that represents twelve hours of their lives, instead of 17 years of acquired general knowledge in analysis, inference, and problem solving.
How long have I spent practicing for the SAT? Sixteen years and six months.