Man my scores...(questions).

pgbovine
Sat, 28 Oct 2006 02:56:59 +0000

While I can understand Mombot’s frustrations with students excessively obsessing over SAT scores in these forums, let me provide an alternative interpretation of standardized test scores that’s been in the back of my mind for the past couple of years. I’d love to know whether others share my opinions or dissent against them :)

To me, standardized tests mainly measure one thing: how well you have prepared for the material on the test and learned about the format, test-taking strategies, etc. Okay, many people tend to trivialize those skills, thinking, “oh well, but it doesn’t really measure aptitude or intelligence or people skills or creativity or initiative, etc.”, but I feel that what it does measure is important — it measures how willing you are to ‘eat your peas and brussel sprouts’ and do something that isn’t glamourous or enriching (studying for endless hours for mindless tests), simply because you need to do so to progress to the next step in your life (yes, SAT scores aren’t everything in admissions, but given two equally-qualified candidates, I’d pick the one with the higher SAT scores).

Why is this ‘eating your peas and brussel sprouts’ skill important (in my opinion)? Because in the real world, unless you are the boss of yourself and of everyone around you, you WILL NEED to suck in your pride and do mundane, trite, boring, vapid, banal, etc. work, to jump through hoops, in order to do your job well and to situate yourself for advancement. It is idealistic to believe that the only things that matter for your life are personal passion, creativity, heart, ability/willingness to learn, interpersonal skills, independence, and all the other traits that modern Western culture values so dearly … why? … because you aren’t the boss most of the time.

People who didn’t study for their SATs and did marginally well are so proud of their accomplishments (they are the most proud people I’ve encountered with respect to SATs), because they felt like they did it on natural talent alone without having to resort to being a studying drone. On the other hand, people who did study a lot and did really well are made to feel ashamed and marginalized because of their high scores; they often don’t want to share their accomplishments for fear that their friends will think that they are ‘tools’, ‘mindless drones’, or ‘no-life nerds’, etc. I find these trends disturbing, from the students that I’ve spoken to over the past few years.

SATs are one instance of simply having to buckle down and study for something that might be boring, difficult, annoying, etc., but a high score shows that a student has put forth that effort when he/she could be doing much more fun things (like eating gummi bears while skateboarding down the hill and posting the videos on youtube). I think that this show of effort is more important in the real world than most people realize. For example, if you are a manager, would you want your employees to always demand to do exactly what they want and never do things for the greater good of the team? If you give your employee an assignment, do you want him/her to not ‘study up’ on anything and simply wing-it on ‘natural talent’ alone and do a decent job, or do you want him/her to be diligent, eat the peas, and study the problem carefully, think a lot, and then create a better solution?

My advice to people who obsess over SAT scores: Just suck it up, eat your peas and brussel sprouts, and study for those tests and do the best you can, but at the same time, keep living your life and doing things you enjoy so that other people can’t marginalize you as a nerd who only studies for SATs. If you do really freaking well on your SATs, you should be proud that your hard work and efforts paid off, and that’s it. It should NOT be your claim to fame. There are many more people in the world like you But congrats, you’ve eaten your peas and swallowed.

My advice to people who are annoyed at people who obsess over SAT scores: Having high test scores and having good inter-personal skills, heart, charisma, etc. are NOT mutually-exclusive. It’s not like you can’t have both Please don’t make people feel bad for putting effort into something for months and getting good results (e.g., in this culture, sports are considered much more sacred and more immune to criticism than academics … for instance, if your child practiced basketball day and night and got really good and won all these games, you would feel deeply insulted if other people said that your child wasted his efforts because basketball skills aren’t all that’s important in life, etc. etc. etc.)

So, I will end my rambling now before I get way off-track. Back to MIT. People with decently good SAT scores get into MIT, people with great SAT scores get into MIT, people with decently good SAT scores don’t get into MIT, people with great SAT scores don’t get into MIT. SAT scores are one of the many facets of one’s application, but they should not be trivialized because they demonstrate one’s willingness to ‘eat your peas and brussel sprouts’, which is an important skill that a teenager should definitely learn. Adults don’t get to have their way all the time :0