The SAT is a process that does not work well in our society due to the ever changing diversity. Diversity is most commonly thought of in terms of race and religion, but is also found in many other aspects of life, particularly in people’s interests, skills, ambitions, and strong suits. All of these types of diversity can attribute to the fact that standardized tests are ludicrous in today’s school systems.

With diversity, there comes a wide array of talents and skills that standardized tests don’t accommodate. A student with extraordinary talents in the arts or in a sport could easily be looked passed when it comes to high school math, reading and writing. How is the system fair to kids who aren’t textbook smart? It’s not. You pay a large sum of money, print out a ticket, then go take one of the most important tests of your  life at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning. This test isn’t made to show your strengths or what you excel at, but to categorize you to colleges as “smart”, “above average”, “average”, “below average”, or “dumb”.

This test sets the stage for the rest of your life even though all it shows is how textbook smart you are, and is made by a group of textbook smart people. Why should these select few get to decide the fate of millions of teenagers in the U.S. based on streamlined forms of enlightenment? Sure some do well and that’s great for them, that’s the type of smart they are. But what about the people who are street smart, creatively smart, people smart, language smart… (any type of smart beyond high school math, reading, and writing smart). What about the people who are bad at paper pencil tests, yet thrive in real world applications. I believe colleges and universities should not rely on standardized test scores but more on the academic success of students throughout their education, as well as an in-depth interview process.