Coming from a Southeast Asian background, I am very familiar with the SAT. Scores, tests, and exams have always been one of my parent’s top priorities for me, especially since college has been on the horizon. From the entrance exams for the top high schools in my area to simple unit tests in my social studies class and even the PSAT, my parents have always pushed and provided me with many resources to do my best on these. Yet, with all this emphasis, it is easy to lose focus on things besides a grade. This is an issue I’ve had to grapple with, taking a step back and asking myself: is this number all that I am, all that I can do? After pondering about it, I have concluded that the SAT grade doesn’t represent the entirety of someone’s potential.
To answer this question, I thought, what is the purpose of these exams? What roles do these skills serve, reading, English, and math? In the simplest way possible, these are the skills that make up our society and workforce today. Many fields draw some benefit from scoring well in these skills. With how society is structured, the skills presented in the SAT are almost guaranteed to function more effectively.
However, there are apparent limitations to the SAT. The primary purpose of the SAT is its biggest limitation: the only accurate thing the SAT can measure is how well students do on the SAT. Translating that to other skills and areas of life isn’t a straightforward conversion. Much like a science experiment, the environment of the SAT is much more different than in the real world. The pressure alone can cause people to underperform during the exam.
In addition, as effective as the skills for the SAT are, they don’t reflect all the skills a person has to offer. Someone might have excellent practical skills, such as with woodcraft or car repair. These things go undecided by a test score but are still invaluable to society. Some people naturally excel at different things, and a person’s value shouldn’t be limited to one skill set.
Disregarding the educational and practical side, people have much more to offer besides raw talent. Feelings and personalities are intangible and hard to enumerate, yet they are significant in everyone’s daily lives. As cliche as it sounds, personalities make a person cheerful, funny, or pleasant; none of these could ever be reflected on an SAT. These interpersonal relationships that form the bread and butter of communities could never be represented on a test score.
With all this said, measuring all of these elements of a person is nearly impossible to do within a short time frame. From the regular person’s perspective, it’s what makes humans human. A million different people, each with a million different perspectives. The complexity of people is just how society works Imagine if everyone was the same, with no variation. Personally, that would not be a fun world to live in.
From any big organization’s perspective, it becomes understandable why a standard is used. Knowing a person takes too much time and resources, so a standard is used. While essays and interviews could be utilized to gain further insight into someone, it would still fall short of their true potential. As unfair as it is, the SAT is the most cost-effective way to gauge a person’s basic skills. Any more complex of a system would put more pressure on the organization and the participant. While the SAT doesn’t reflect one’s true potential, life provides multiple avenues in life to express their skill sets.