PSAT

Hi Bloggers! This weekend, I will be taking the PSAT.  If you score in the top 1 percent, you become a National Merit Scholar.  A National Merit Scholar automatically gets free tuition to 43 schools.  There are a lot more schools that give you full rides after interviews and C.V. analysis.  That is a big deal.  With a four year college averaging $100,000, a full ride helps you get out of college debt free.

This test, however, doesn’t test what you know as a student.  It is not an intelligence test.  It is a test to see how well you can take the PSAT.  Supposedly, it predicts how you will do in college.  There are no colleges courses that have you spot the error in a sentence or ask you random vocabulary.   Why does the SAT test these things?  One reason is that the test is not partial to anyone.  Blacks can be just as likely to get an answer correct as a Mexican or European.  This prevents law suits.  The second reason is the difference in school curriculums.  The same classes are taught at different difficulty levels across the country.  This means grades and G.P.A. can vary dramatically.  A 4.0 in a small town in Alabama is not the same as a 4.0 at a Minnesotan school.  The quality is just very different.  Colleges can’t compare G.P.A. of students across the country. 

           How can we change this problem?  In this case, it is a broken system with no ending result.  The colleges should take sports, activities, and relative G.P.A of the students for scholarships.  PSAT will not change to be what you learn in class because every district in America teaches a different curriculum.  So take one of those PSAT booklets and figure out how to take this test because colleges are forced to put a lot of weight on this.    

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