Standardized testing is a mandatory part of every student’s school year, and this week, sophomores and juniors were no exception to this rule. This past Wednesday, juniors participated in a free school-day SAT, while sophomores took the FSA writing assessment throughout the week.

Staffers Mia McKell and Veronica Falcon interviewed students about this week’s testing. Read below to see how each student felt about their testing experience.

FSA

The FSA ELA test is an evaluation in which students are required to compose an essay within a time frame based off a set prompt.

Claire White (’18)

Q: Do you feel you were prepared for the FSA?

A: “I didn’t, we haven’t done a lot of practice, we’ve written like two essays and those in like the first nine weeks, so no.”

Q: How was your personal FSA experience?

A: “The topic was really boring, the prompts are never good, so like you can’t do much that and you get really bored with it really fast. I don’t know what its preparing us for though, because the essays we write for English have more outlined requirements but on these it just says ‘write about it’ and don’t give any requirements. For English you have to have certain things for it to make you go in-depth with them but these you can just pull random quotes from it and do whatever you want with them.”

Q: How do you think you did?

A: “I feel like nobody does bad on those since there is like no specifications on what to do. You can just do whatever you interpret it to be, whatever way you want, so I feel like everyone always does good on them”

Milin Kurupt (’18)

Q: Did you feel prepared for the FSA?

A: ” I felt prepared because Mrs. DiFed told us exactly  how to prepare for it, she taught us the structure of how to write.”

Q: What was your experience like while taking it?

A: “I felt confident about what I [was] doing”

Q: How do you think you did?

A: “I think I got a ten on it, because I used proper evidence to support my thesis”

SAT

The SAT is a four-part consisting of tests in critical reading, writing and math, including an essay. A student’s score on the SAT is evaluated on a point system from 400 to 1600, with a separate scaled score for the essay. How well one performs can factor into the college admissions process.

Ryan Zesiger (’17)

Q: Did you feel like you were prepared for the SAT?

A: “[I felt] a little prepared, I’ve been going to tutoring and stuff, and then I’m going to prepare more for the next one I want to take because I want to take it at least 3 times.”

Q: How was your personal SAT experience?

A: “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be… it was kind of easy. I didn’t overthink it.”

Q: Do you think it is beneficial to take the SAT in school?

A: “No, not really, I mean you kind of have to take it so you can just take it whenever they are doing it. They do it at different locations so you can just sign up for it. It is beneficial because it’s free.”

Katherine Sibley (’17)

Q: Did you feel like you were prepared for the SAT?

A: “I watched a couple Crash Course videos at like 10:30 the night before, so I probably could have prepared more but… eh.”

Q: How was your personal SAT experience?

A: “Math was rough but I’m not a math person so I guess it really just depends on what your personal strengths are, like whether you’re better at say English or Math.”

Q: Do you think it’s beneficial to take the SAT at school?

A: “I think it definitely helped, everyone was in the same boat so it was us all taking the same test. There are definitely variations within the test and it’s a lot easier to take it with people who are going through the same thing as you.”