With the school year back in action, students’ nerves begin to rise again.

However, the nerves do not always come from the stacks of assignments and having a limited schedule.

The SATs cause a tremendous amount of stress to students too.

This standardized test was originally developed for the purpose of measuring students’, specifically juniors’ and seniors’, skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. The SAT costs roughly 50 dollars to take. However, students seem to only be throwing money to the College Board in hopes of scoring well enough to get accepted into the college of their dreams.

According to the College Board, nearly 1.8 million students took the SAT in 2017.

Here is the catch in our world today: colleges and universities are starting to not care about SAT scores anymore.

Some of the top-tier schools that are not requiring a score from the standardized test include:

Franklin and Marshall College

Millersville University of Pennsylvania

Wake Forest University

University of Iowa

Colorado College

New York University

Hamilton College

This may only be a few of the many schools that do not require an SAT score, however the entire list can be viewed on PrepScholar.com.

Do not get me wrong, I understand that many students want to get accepted into a secondary school that requires an excellent SAT score. However, more secondary schools are starting to not care about SAT scores as much. These affects may be positive as results have already shown.

Take Hampshire College, for example: the New England-based college decided to completely drop standardized testing from their application process in 2014.Their reason for doing this was a part of Hampshire College’s new admissions strategy. A year after this new process, the college saw a dramatic increase in the character and motivation of their applicants.

Almost every student can agree that performing well on standardized testing in high school is a must. However, with the current uprise of universities not requiring these scores, that stress is gone. It appears schools are finally getting the idea that what matters in education is not a score on a standardized test, but instead building the student’s passion for learning.

With the rates of schools dropping these tests, more and more schools seem likely to continue with that decision. It could come to the day when high school students no longer need to take this test to pursue further education to achieve their dreams.

As a final thought, if school is supposed to equip us with the necessities in life, then what does a standardized test have to do with our future?

“These tests are too crude to be used and should be abandoned.”

– Frederick J. Kelly, the founder of standardized testing