by Vicki Brown

Created on: July 20, 2008

I am living proof that the SATs should not be used to determine admission to college. I was a good student in high school. I was on the honor roll and my grades were As and Bs. I took the required math courses and no more. Numbers are dull.

I loved English class and literature and humanities. I was and still am a voracious reader. I like to write. I love words. Words are never dull.

When I took the SATs, I breezed through the verbal part. I was sad when I was done. One look at the math part told me that there was very little I knew about what they were asking. So, I came up with a strategy that worked for me. I looked at the numbers in the equation. Then I looked at the numbers in the answers. The answer that looked similar to the equation in strictly a numerical sense was the answer I chose.

When the results came, I couldn't believe my eyes. I had scored a perfect 800 on the verbal part. No surprise there but I had scored 750 on the math section. Me? me the student who hated math, took nothing higher than algebra, and had no idea what the questions were. My strategy worked or I was lucky. Either way, it was not an accurate assessment of my mathematical prowess.

Because of my high score, I had scholarship offers from some very good schools. I got credit for basic math courses at the college I went to and got As for them. I felt like a thief.

Fast forward 25 years or so, now my kids begin to take the SATs. The oldest and smartest (just ask him) almost passed me. He got an 800 on the math and 720 on the verbal. The next child's turn arrived four years later. Now, Tim was never a student. He got by. His SAT total was in the 1300s I think. It wasn't cause for celebration but not too bad either.

The youngest, and only girl, took them a year later. She got an 800 in math and a 690 in the verbal part. My husband, when asked, says his were lower than anyone's.

The oldest, Andrew, didn't do very well at college. He hung in there but no test had tried to predict maturity. He sat out a few semesters until he was ready to get serious. When he net back he got all As and graduated with honors. While he was in graduate school, he taught preparation classes for the SATs and then for the GRE (which he got an almost perfect score on). The owners asked him if he had ever taken the test for business school. He said he hadn't.

They had him take the GMAT (for business school) and he scored very high, again. He was now tutoring people to take a test about a subject that he knew very little.

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