By Andrea Park

Gargoyle assistant editor

Posted Friday, March 16, 2007, The OG, features & in depth

HI, MY NAME is Andrea Park. I am 16 years old, and I'm a junior attending University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Ill.

I am also a workaholic, perfectionist, worrywart, sometime optimist, sometime pessimist, and an undeniable driven overachiever.

Being an overachiever may account for my willingness to put 120 percent into everything I do, even if it means having to swallow Aciphex pills daily to stabilize my stress-induced acid reflux.

A typical day starts well before the sun rises. I am up at 5:08 a.m. to go to swim practice before school.

Then there's the long eight-hour school day that ends at 4. I'm at practice again from 5:30 to 7:30, and the rest of the evening is dedicated to homework and studying.

If I were an Olympic-bound athlete, or even a highly coveted and recruited athlete with a guaranteed spot on a team, I wouldn't have to worry so much about grades. But, alas, you won't be seeing me swimming in China in 2008, so doing well in school is my first priority.

I'm sure more than a few of my peers can identify with me because, unfortunately, I am one of the many sleep-deprived overachieving Uni students who choose not only to excel in school but at all of the extracurricular activities they pursue, whether it be a Uni sport, speed-skating, chess, gymnastics, playing the violin, acting, painting, or even underwater basket weaving.

PERSONAL PSAT PROBLEMS

I looked at my score. I wanted to remain calm, but the inevitable, unpleasant, and extremely irrational “Oh My God, Let's Freak Out” feeling was steadily growing bigger, making its way from my chest to the back of my throat.

“Yoga breaths,” my swim coach always says to me when I'm stressing out before an event. “Do some yoga breaths. Breathe in the good, breathe out the bad.”

OK. Breathe in: “You're smart Andrea! You'll get into college! It's only a practice test.” Breathe out: “198.”

Exactly how much had I been anticipating, or more accurately dreading, the PSAT results?

Well, a couple of weeks before receiving the ominous envelope, I had a dream about it:

I came home from school and the dreaded envelope addressed to “Miss Andrea Park and her Parent Guardians” awaited on the kitchen counter. My hands were shaking, my cheeks were burning, and my heart was hammering away.

I very hastily tore it open: 110 … 110?

“Oh crap, I got a 110 out of a total possible 240?”

All of a sudden my mom, dad, brother, extended family members, teachers, and friends popped up and surrounded me. I tried to laugh it off, but the varied looks of disappointment, amusement, sympathy, and even disgust filled my heart with distress. In order to save face, I proceeded to explain to them that you actually have to multiply the score by two, so really my score was a 220.

Dream on, Andrea.

Performing well, or perhaps more appropriately, ridiculously well, on the PSAT is also very important to an overachieving student. Why? Being able to put the gleaming honor of “National Merit Scholar,” which in 2006 required an Illinois student to score 218 out of 240 to qualify as a semifinalist, on your application gives you a competitive edge in the admissions process, not to mention that scoring in the top 1 percent nationally is a huge accomplishment.

THE COMPETITION TO GET INTO COLLEGE

Today high school students are willing to spend their evenings at American versions of Asian cram schools not only to prep for the SAT or ACT but for the PSAT and PLAN as well.

(cartoon by Joy Shapley) (click to enlarge)

I wish I could scoff at those silly students who actually prepare for a practice test, but I am one of those “silly” students.

As part of a package deal at the Kaplan Center, this fall I took a PSAT prep course, and I will soon take on the SAT portion. Oh, and did I forget to mention that over winter break I spent part of my days at an ACT prep course run by Better Test Scores?

In defense of spending the time and money on these prep courses, I would like to point out that, whether it's true or not, enrolling in these classes seems like the only tangible option for keeping up with everyone else.

So why do I, along with many of my peers at Uni and across the country, avidly prepare for a standardized test? As my ACT instructor emphatically noted, “This test is the most important test you'll ever take in high school.”

And as much as I resist the notion that these tests carry a heavy weight, my ACT instructor has a point.

These tests are kind of a big deal and will affect your future. It seems that colleges try to reassure a student by saying, “Grades and test scores work as qualifiers in the admissions process,” but what's not so comforting is knowing that you've got to take the first step and get that test score to qualify.

STANDARDIZED SCAM

Standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT are often believed to be a key factor in keeping alive the idea of meritocracy, which is so dear to many proud Americans. And in many ways, it makes sense. Everyone, regardless of race or socioeconomic background, has to take the same test on the same day under the same conditions.

But Peter Sacks, an author and essayist who often writes about American education issues and the culture that surrounds them, points out in the article “Testing Times in Higher Ed” that the “longstanding belief that high-stakes mental tests are the great equalizer of society is dubious at best, and at worst a clever piece of propaganda that has well served the interests of American elites.”

In fact, at the beginning of the 1900s, standardized testing was first introduced to America by educational leaders partly as a way to maintain proto-aristocratic ideals. In 1908, H.H. Goddard introduced to America the Binet-Simon Scale, a test engineered by French psychologist Alfred Binet that supposedly revealed a child's mental age, and conveniently used it as a way to prove white superiority.

Even Binet, a forefather of standardized testing, was aware of the shortcomings of his test. He realized that intelligence is best measured qualitatively, not quantitatively, and that all children develop intellectually at different rates.

Perhaps most revealing of standardized testing is that Binet even saw a strong relationship between a child's performance and social class. He thus concluded that comparing standardized test results would only be useful with children who come from similar social classes.

TODAY'S REALITY

Today the Binet-Simon test has slowly morphed into other standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT. And there is still evidence that comparing test scores is extremely unfair, particularly to kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

My charismatic ACT instructor was lauding the mostly white and economically well off class for dedicating their winter break time to study while jokingly suggesting that all of the other kids were probably being bums, getting drunk and high.

My Uni peers and I didn't find this so funny because we realized that a large population of students can spend neither the money nor the time at a fancy ACT prep course. It's a fact that kids who are well off do better on these tests.

Perhaps it stems from discrimination against minority students and students of lower socioeconomic classes within the school system.

Maybe it has to do with certain public schools experiencing the negative effects of funding cuts and the No Child Left Behind legislation, while kids who are well off can attend higher quality private or public schools.

In any case, students with wealth and privilege often have access to a better education and are also able to afford SAT and ACT textbooks, classes, and whatever else. And don't forget that advantaged kids usually have parents who encourage them to prepare for such tests in order to pursue a college education.

Junior Michelle Mehnert's mother, who grew up in El Paso, Texas, was the first in her family to go on to college.

“My grandma finished the sixth grade, and my grandpa only finished the second,” Mehnert said. “The [Mexican-American] culture [my mother was a part of] promoted graduating high school, getting married, and getting a job. It takes a lot of encouragement from family members and society to do more than what is expected of you.”

It's clear that coming from a family and community that doesn't stress the importance of education, especially a college education, makes it much more difficult to succeed academically. When comparing these students to privileged kids who have the familial and societal support to pursue a higher education, one can see how uneven the playing field really is.

Though there is enough evidence to prove the desultory nature of the SAT and ACT, our society continues to insist on using these tests as a measuring stick of an applicant's admissibility and potential.

Smaller colleges like Bates College in Maine and Knox College in Illinois have seen the positive results of making SAT and ACT requirements optional.

But critics argue that these colleges are only able to make such a reform because they are small liberal arts schools and have the means to pay such individual attention to each applicant.

Making standardized test scores optional at large public and private universities, which must sift through thousands and thousands of applications, may not be practical. Today, the SAT and ACT increasingly seem like essential, if imperfect, tools, especially with grade inflation and the impersonal, glorifying nature of teacher recommendations.

THE FUTURE FREAKS ME OUT

Though they are extremely unfair to minorities and the underprivileged, and are actually a very useful tool in maintaining the “eliteness” of the middle and upper classes, standardized tests are, for now, here to stay.

So what happens to those middle- and upper-class students who can't test well? A score of 198 nationally is actually good, in the 96th percentile to be exact, but my score compared to those of my peers at Uni probably puts me in the very bottom percentile range.

How do I know this? When the inevitable “What's your score?” game started after the results came back earlier this year, I didn't hear of anyone who did worse than me. So what can I do? Am I bound to be a social failure? Am I not as qualified as my peers because my test scores are lower than theirs?

The SAT and ACT are certainly not going to disappear by next year when I start applying to colleges, so I know I'm going to have to suck it up and deal.

Besides, I am blessed and privileged enough to have all the tools and resources to do well on the test, and with a fully functioning brain, there is really no reason for me to do otherwise.

So, for right now I choose to be an optimist. I'm keeping my head up with the knowledge that the PSAT is exactly what the name says it is: a practice test that will have no bearing on how I'll do on the future test that counts.

The larger societal issues of unequal education and minority discrimination that standardized tests bring to light make it clear that change needs to be made. Perhaps the first step is realizing the truth about these tests.

The PSAT, SAT, and ACT do not keep meritocracy alive. If anything, they are going against the ideological base our country was built on: equal opportunity for all.

THE SERIES SO FAR

— Audio podcast: Introducing our college journey

— Article: Andrea takes the PSAT … and finds out how she did

— Article: Bethany looks for a college … and ignores the hype