The College Board has created a test that almost every high schooler takes: the SAT. It has reading, grammar, and math. Seems simple, right? We have been taking reading and math classes our whole life. This should be a breeze. Well, not really.

First of all, there is a lot of geometry, trigonometry, and algebra being tested. I know I am not the only one who hasn’t taken geometry since 8th grade and finished algebra 2 freshman year. This is a struggle because now I am having to remember all different topics from these subjects. I have to take a long test on them that basically decides whether I get into college or not. That doesn’t make sense. I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast this morning, how am I going to remember math from three to four years ago?

Your solution to my problem might be to get a tutor. Well, that is exactly what I did, but not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to afford a couple of thousand dollar tutor. Some people can’t even afford to take the SAT more than once. They can only afford to take the free one given at school. They get one chance. They get one chance to get a good score so they can get into college. That should not be a significant factor in how you get into college.

Additionally, some people aren’t good at taking tests. Personally, I am not. I do not do good under time pressure. I am smart and I will figure out the right answer but I need to be able to take my time to figure it out. On the SAT you have anywhere from 48 to 87 seconds per question (depending on what section you’re in). And in that short amount of time, you’re supposed to get the correct answer? I just do not see how the SAT represents how smart you are and I believe it should not influence college’s decisions.

I understand the SAT is supposed to be somewhat of a baseline to show students’ readiness for college. They want to see students’ different abilities on reading comprehension and problem solving, but College Board makes the questions extremely wordy. They have too much fluff in their questions and you can barely figure out what they are trying to say. It takes you like half of the time you have on the question trying to figure out what they are asking you. Then, you barely have enough time to think through the answer choices. You can’t rush through the sections because then you aren’t actually comprehending the passage or questions and get even more wrong.

All in all, this three-hour-long enduring test does not measure your intelligence. It measures more on your ability to work under a time clock and how good your guessing game is. My recommendation is to cancel the SAT. Scratch it all together. Colleges look at our scores to accept or deny us but it isn’t accurate, so it needs to go.