Care to or not, every high schooler has heard of the college board with its infamous reputation of causing stress and anxiety. With such a horrible reputation, it is no wonder many students stray away from their multitudes of tests, yet there are still a plethora of students who subject themselves to the torture of the SAT and AP tests. Although it has been proven that better test scores increase admissions rates to highly selective colleges, the real question still remains on whether or not there is any significance beyond that.
The simple answer is yes, there is actually a significance to taking these mind numbing tests. Besides the obvious answer of standing out to colleges and universities, taking AP tests can actually save both time and money in college (Collegeboard 1). As you might already know, most four year colleges accept AP credit as college credit, so with a simple 3 or higher, you can get one college credit meaning one less class that needs to be taken. Although one college credit doesn’t like it much, enough AP credits can give one “the flexibility to change majors, pursue a second degree, study abroad, or even transfer colleges” (Collegeboard 1). Such flexibility is hard to have if you don’t start college with a head start which is why AP tests can be helpful other than just in the college admission process.
Furthermore, all those standardized tests can accustom students who desire to enter certain workforces with the strenuous amount of studying needed to do well. For starters, if you want to be a lawyer, it is not just a skip and hop to law school and the workforce. One first needs to pass the rigorous LSAT, which is akin to the SAT on steroids; and it doesn’t stop there. After a minimum of about three years, the students need to then pass the even harder Bar Exam to finally get the long sought after license to practice law. Law is not the only occupation that requires an exam as there are a plethora more to go with many occupations: the MCAT for doctors, GMAT for business, CPA for accounts, FE for engineers, the list goes on. This list is not meant to deter anyone interested in those occupations, but just to raise awareness for what the future may hold and use the tests we have in high school as practice for what is to come.
As much as many of us, myself included, complain about how the many exams that fill our lives are pointless and how collegeboard is stupid, only one of those things is true. Those pointless exams can be used to prepare ourselves for the years of test-taking to come, and whether we believe in collegeboard or not, we can at least make the most of the opportunities that could aid in our futures.
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Source: blog.collegeboard.org
Photo Credit: ihsvoice.com
