May is over, and various students have just gotten their results from that fateful test: SATs. Some may celebrate while others sigh and gear themselves for another painful round of test-taking. But before students try to find meaning behind their scores, they should ask themselves—do the SATs say anything about skill? Studies, statistics and the experiences of millions of students say otherwise. The SATs are meant to make the college admissions process fairer, but they utterly fail to serve as the great equalizer that the College Board claims them to be.

The SATs are meant to assess a student’s abilities—so the College Board claims. But the corporation seems unsure of what, exactly, those abilities are. The numerous name changes the SATs have undergone plainly reflect this fact. SAT used to stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test, but doubts about the test’s ability to measure something as innate as aptitude caused the corporation to rename it the Scholastic Assessment Test. Essentially the “Scholastic Test Test,” it is clear that the SAT does not measure aptitude, or really anything else. The College board has also admitted the test’s inability to measure intelligence by changing the name from an acronym to simply the SAT.

The College Board’s confusion as to what its own test actually does is disturbing, and that confusion is even more evident in the corporation’s method of choosing questions. Before a question makes it onto the SATs, it undergoes its own exam: high scoring students must generally get it right, and low scoring students must generally get it wrong. If the question does not meet these criteria, it is tossed out. The College Board has no idea what kind of person is supposed to do well on any given question; it only knows that some students inherently do well and others do not. This useless piece of knowledge cannot produce a test that assesses anything remotely ‘scholastic.’

The merit of what the SAT measures, whatever that may be, is cheapened by companies that make millions solely by training students to beat the test. A prime example is Princeton Review: the company’s courses promise to boost any student’s score by at least 200 points (out of 2400) simply by teaching testing strategies, with little actual academic material included. Clearly, the courses work, since people are paying—the company made about $146 million last year. If a mere course on test taking can raise a student’s score by such a substantial amount, the score is clearly no measure of innate aptitude or academic knowledge.

What’s more, companies like Princeton Review and its competitor, Kaplan, reveal another one of the SATs’ many flaws: it gives wealthier kids an enormous advantage. Through classes, personal tutors and multiple attempts at taking the test, a student who might have gotten a mediocre score can get a fantastic score, while students who cannot pay for such advantages are unjustly left in the dust. In another slap to the poorer half of America, the SATs even allow some particularly wealthy students to get extra time they do not need. Parents can shop around for a doctor that is willing to classify their child as having a mental disability, and such doctors are more common than many educators like to think. Take the elite Wayland High School: according to an 2006 ABC News article, at the school, over 12 percent of the students received special accommodations in 2006—that’s over six times the estimated national average of high school kids with learning disabilities. The College Board used to put things in perspective for admissions officers by marking the tests of students who received extra time. But the College Board stopped that a few years ago, thus further helping privileged kids frequent the Ivies on unfair grounds.

In the end, the College Board’s final defense of the SATs lies in its supposed ability to predict a student’s college GPA. The idea is partially true: together, one’s GPA and one’s SAT scores do a pretty good job of calculating college success. But when taken alone, the SATs’ role in predicting one’s college GPA is miniscule at best. Students already get measured through countless factors: AP scores, grades, extracurricular activities, class rank and more. Why put students on another stressful measuring scale if it so broken and inaccurate?

According to a 2006 ABC News article, 27 colleges around the nation have already recognized the SAT’s inability to predict college success and therefore do not require SAT or ACT results in their applications, and this trend in continuing. According to a CBS News article, In mid-May, Wakeforest University announced that it would no longer take the SATs into consideration on applications.

The SATs are nothing but a product of a society’s unhealthy obsession with test scores. Unlike classes, they do not teach students new materials. Unlike recommendations, they say nothing about a student’s personality. They are a shameful waste of money; if colleges want to be fair, they must take SAT scores out of the admissions process entirely.

—Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the staff (assenting: 18; dissenting: 6)