No longer is applying to college a short essay, one SAT, and sending a transcript. Today each application for college rivals a mortgage application, and the number of tests a person takes makes him feel as if he is trying to get a fighter pilot’s license.
I am currently in the midst of applying to college, and have found it to be much more labor intensive then I had ever imagined (despite the warnings from my sibling). First, the SAT 1. It is but one of a plethora of tests that takes about five hours and consumes one’s Saturday.
A student also has to take a minimum of two SAT subject tests. SAT 2 tests aren’t the regular SAT tests. They are much more in depth and test the material students have learned over all their school years. No longer can a kid get a great score just because he or she is good at reading passages about 18th century England.
Two SAT 2 tests are the minimum for many colleges, and some even insist on three! I personally took the SAT 2 exams for math and U.S. history. Countless hours of review and preparation consumed my life for weeks.
Think you’re finished? Not quite yet. Many kids are opting to take the ACT test. I decided not to take the ACT because I cannot stand the thought of another test and still have my junior finals ahead of me.
And after these four or five tests, kids still have to take AP tests that are given by the College Board (the same people that bring you the SAT). These are radically in depth in each subject, and kids basically study all year for these through their designated AP course.
Don’t think I am the only one who believes the junior year is all about “alphabet tests.”
Vee Dunlevie, a Sacred Heart high-school junior, told me: “I found the subject tests to be quite difficult. While the timing is not as crucial as it is in the SAT, many of the questions are obscure and hard to decipher. Compared to the AP tests that I have taken, I found the SAT subject tests are more challenging.”
Another Sacred Heart junior, Katie Gallagher, said: “I went to a SAT prep course over the summer and it really helped me out with tactics on how to do better on the SATs. I highly suggest doing something like that.”
So if you have a early high schooler or even a late middle-schooler, get them started on the process now for studying for all these tests, so they don’t end up spending the entire summer before their junior year making sure they can identify a parallel structure error in the grammar section on the SAT.
Miles McMullin, a junior at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, is a Woodside resident.
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