When you think about the SAT, the first thing that comes to mind is stress, anxiety, and maybe even a little fear. The SAT overall tells students if they are ready to begin their journey to college. If they fail, they may feel like they aren’t ready for life after high school, which can be very stressful. A test shouldn’t determine your entry into college; thus, the SAT should continue to be optional for some university applications.    

  For a long time, the SATs were fundamental to see if you were college-ready, based on the test scores you earned. The idea of SATs determining whether or not you should go to a certain university is absurd. Why should a single test score control what we do after high school? Students should not have to worry and stress about what they get on a test, as they should keep their focus on other subjects and activities such as studying for tests in other classes or taking a much needed break by hanging out with friends.

  The SAT’s overall are just irrelevant and should remain optional. The SAT’s really don’t help students, and although some may think they do or feel obligated to take them for the sole purpose of seeing how well they do,  they are really just unhelpful and ultimately have a negative impact on students’ mental health. This means it can cause students to have anxiety attacks, or cause them to become depressed.  

   I also feel that the SAT is not a reliable way to reveal a student’s academic abilities. Some students don’t have the testing skills that are typically necessary to ace the SAT, which can hold them back from being able to go to certain universities or colleges. Keeping the SAT optional for university applications may benefit some students due to this, making it so that those who aren’t great at test taking have the choice to opt out of it and prove their other strengths with their GPA, extracurricular activities, and more things that are unique to them. 

   Covid is also one of the main reasons why the SAT’s should stay optional, since this whole pandemic has set everyone back academically, to the point where many people needed to relearn what they had accomplished the year before. So if you think about it, the SAT should stay optional, otherwise you are just setting up our fellow students for failure.