Around this time of every year, the butterflies in our stomachs begin to flutter. Not only do we have to worry about keeping our grades up in school, we also have to start the college admissions process where the SAT seems to be the main component. The SAT is a standardized test that is supposed to establish a student’s academic excellence, but does it really?

According to the Princeton Review, when two students have the same Grade Point Average of 91, the college then turns to the SAT scores. Along with your GPA and SAT scores colleges will look at recommendations, community service, as well as extra curricular activities. Princeton Review, makes it seem as if colleges brush aside everything and leave the SAT as their main focus when it comes to accepting freshmen. The SAT shouldn’t carry more weight than the other components of the college admissions process. The weight should be balanced and equal to the influence of your GPA, extra curricular activities, community service, and recommendations.

All year you can do excellent in all your classes and fail horribly on one test. It is unfair that students should be evaluated on only one exam, which assesses students on a broad basis and might not work for everyone. You may take the SAT as many times as you wish to pay for, but it has been said that you will only raise your score 100 points.

Everyone has a strength and weakness. I am one who will do great on reading and not so well on math. The main problem in both sections is the time. When I have one more story left along with about ten questions, I look down at my watch and begin to panic, realizing that there is only five minutes left. I skim the story as quickly as I can and answer all the questions with the idea of hit or miss. Sure, they might tell you to leave it blank but with ten questions you never know you might get a few points out of it. I know I’m not the only one when I look around the room and see others rushing through their scantrons. The math is also extremely difficult and sometimes requires needing more than five minutes to figure out the answer.

I took a PSAT course at Princeton to get familiar with the questions on this standardized test. The only way you can do acceptably on the math section is if you learn the tricks of the Educational Testing Service, who makes the test and is part of the College Board. These tricks include plug ins, just “doing it” and process of elimination. But are tricks, not tests on your knowledge.

Courses for SAT test preparation such as Kaplan and Princeton, which we costs about $1000, may lead to an increase in test grades but according to Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard University, there is no increase in classroom grades. If you take these courses to learn the tricks of the SAT you are not proving your academic excellence but rather training to beat the ETS.

It is said that to enter college you must go through the college admissions process. A process involves more than one step, steps colleges should utilize in making their selections. The SATs should be a starting point, not the final point. It’s because of this that we, the students, need to get a head start in the process and hope they get rid of the SAT.