The SAT is a test that many high school students stress over greatly. Many spend hours at a time preparing in hopes that they will receive the scores they need to attend the college of their dreams. Math, critical reading, and writing are the three basic genres tested when taking the SAT, but what about all the other folds of intelligence that are not tested? Does the score of the SAT or any other standardized test score really give an accurate account of a student’s intelligence or their ability to learn and comprehend information on a college level? Many scholarly students do not test well when taking standardized tests and therefore their scores do not accurately reflect their true intelligence. Colleges and Universities today place too much trust in the ability of the standardized test system to accurately judge a student’s learning ability.
Most standardized tests only test a student on three or four areas. Not every student is going to excel in those specific areas. Some students excel in different areas that are not tested on a certain standardized test, and therefore their ability in that specific subject is not evaluated. Take the SAT for example. The three main areas that are tested when taking the SAT are math, critical reading, and writing. What about the student who excels in science or history? Those areas of his intelligence are not tested. Who knows how many students have been denied acceptance to a college they have applied to based on SAT scores, when really they are extremely intelligent, just maybe not in those specific genres of information.
Does the score received on a standardized test correctly reflect the student’s true intelligence or their ability to learn? Taking a standardized test for most students can be extremely stressful and intimidating. The pressure to do well is immense, because more times than not, the score received determines the student’s collegiate future. This pressure causes many students to freeze...