Yan 1

Harry Yan

Dr. Peters

ENGL 133

6 March 2018

Argumentative Essay

Do you think a test making company could make an enormous amount of money? If you

think no, I am afraid that it is not quite right. College Board, an organization that regulates

standardized testing for college admissions, has a revenue of $200,000,000 dollars and a profit of

$62,000,000 in 2013 (Weissmann). The Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) is an exam offered by

College Board to high school students in the world. Its score is an important reference for US

colleges to decide whether to accept or decline applicants. Although there are over 1.3 million

students taking the SAT each year, the SAT is not a good measure of student performance.

The SAT assesses students’ skills in Evidence-based Reading, Writing, and Mathematics.

The test includes 144 multiple choice questions and 13 student-produced response questions.

Gaston Caperton, the former governor of West Virginia, who is the president of the College

Board expressed “most college admissions officers tell [them] they rely on the SAT to be an

objective measure of college readiness and [the] SAT has proven to be a valid, fair, and reliable

data tool for college admissions” (Caperton). People who support the SAT have the following

major points in their opinions. Firstly, they think the SAT is fair for every student since all the

tests are standardized. In the test, no free-response question is involved, and all the answer sheets

are sent to grading machines avoiding the personal biases of different graders. Secondly, every

student has the choice to take this test multiple times. The statistic shows that the majority of the
 Yan 2

students would take the SAT two to three times; and according to the table from College Board,

students perform better on later SAT tests than the first one (“Percentage of Students with

Senior-Year Score Gain or Loss (2017 Cohort)”). Lastly, SAT scores are easy for colleges to

gauge students from all over the world since the test results are out of 1600 making it easy to

compare two applicants.

Although the SAT are standardized, and no bias is involved in the tests, it only focuses on

students’ logic, but not their performance. Logic is very important for learning which helps

people to understand and handle a new concept easily. However, students in college are required

to implement those concepts to complete different kinds of tasks. Students can repeatedly

practice different SAT mock exams in order to improve their score since the SAT is a logic test,

but in the process of doing practice exams, students barely improve their critical thinking and

analyzing paragraphs for intent and content skills which such skills are what the SAT mainly test

on. Instead, students develop an inflexible thinking for this specific test. Johnny Wei, a current

senior at Capital Christian High School, who took SAT twice towards the end of last year,

attended an SAT crash course program in China during last summer. In the reading class in the

crash course, the lecturer instructed them “not to read the articles in the SAT, but to read the

questions and find the similar words in the article, and by reading the small section of the article,

test takers should be able to pick which answer the best suit is according to the question” (Wei).

This strategy could save test takers’ time and decrease their stress while doing the reading

questions on the SAT. And they had learned different kinds of strategies for different sections on

the test. Johnny expressed that “[they] were able to get the majority of the questions right by

using the strategies which the crash course provided” (Wei). Not only did the crash course
 Yan 3

provide the fast approaches to solving most of the problems on the SAT, it also “taught students

how to prepare for this test mentally” (Wei).

Preparing for the test mentally is an important part of taking the SAT. Test takers spend

much time on preparing for the SAT before the test day as they want to perform their best on the

test. Obviously, this is the basis for receiving a high score on the SAT. However, most test takers

spend more time on learning how to take the test instead of preparing for the test. As everybody

knows, the SAT is a time-consuming test. As such, test takers train to allocate specific time to

spend on each question; many SAT prep books provide time-management strategies for the test

takers. For example, the majority of the books mention that test takers should read all the

questions before reading any excerpts; this step may help them to exclude the incorrect answers

efficiently, which could save time for answering the rest of the questions.

Since this test is important for the test takers, they may have test anxiety that would

definitely affect their performance on the test. Test anxiety is caused by various factors, such as

fear of failure, lack of preparation, and poor test history; it can collapse test takers’ thought

processes so that their ability to analyze, synthesize, abstract, and generalize does not operate as

usual (“Test Anxiety”). To overcome examination anxiety, it is very important to keep a stable

mentality before the test.

Despite that you have to be both physically and mentally prepared to take this test in

order to get a satisfying test score, the SAT does not test on the skills which are necessary for

different majors which students intend to be in. Students should show their deep interest and

understanding of the relevant concepts corresponding to each major. Howard Gardner, the Hobbs

Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard

University, mentioned on an online forum that “Students should have some choice about the
 Yan 4

topics on which they are examined” (Gardner). For example, students who are interested in

biology major may have been asked questions such as using their prior biology knowledge to

discuss pros and cons of genetic therapy, and students who are interested in mathematics major

may have been asked questions like discussing the use of set theory in everyday life. The test

should be focused on the depth of knowledge rather than breadth.

(Conclusion)
 Yan 5

Works Cited

Caperton, Gaston. “SAT Scores Help Colleges Make Better Decisions.” Standardized Testing,

edited by Dedria Bryfonski, Greenhaven Press, 2012. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in

Context,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010478226/OVIC?u=calpolyw_csu&xid=65853b

04. Accessed 26 Feb. 2018. Originally published as "SATs Help Colleges Make Smarter

Admissions Calls," U.S. News & World Report, 4 Sept. 2009.

Gardner, Howard, et al. "Reconsidering the SAT. (Forum)." Issues in Science and Technology,

vol. 18, no. 3, 2002, p. 11+. Opposing Viewpoints in Context,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A85697918/OVIC?u=calpolyw_csu&xid=d705cb9c.

Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

“Percentage of Students with Senior-Year Score Gain or Loss (2017 Cohort).” College Board,

2017, secure-media.collegeboard.org/sat/pdf/percentage-of-students-with-senior-year-

score-gain-or-loss.pdf.

“Test Anxiety.” Anxiety and Depression Association of America, adaa.org/living-with-

anxiety/children/test-anxiety.

Wei, Johnny. Personal interview. 5 March 2018.

Weissmann, Elena. “The College Board: A Very Profitable ‘Nonprofit.’” New Brunswick Patch,

14 June 2013, https://patch.com/new-jersey/newbrunswick/bp--the-college-board-a-very-

profitable-nonprofit.