People are right when they say that the eleventh grade is one of the most important grades, and the hardest to survive. If you have just finished the eleventh grade it must have seemed like a good part of the year was spent concerned with two things, colleges and the SATs. Despite differences in where students attend high school, where they live, or their economic situations, colleges and the SAT Reasoning Test worry all. So what is this test that seems to constantly be on students minds’ and drive some families to spend hundreds of dollars on tutoring?
The SAT Reasoning Test has three components; math, writing, and critical reading. The distributors of the SATs claim that the test can reflect whether or not a person is ready for college. However, there is much dispute over whether the SATs accurately are able to predict how a student will do in his or her college. Brent Staples, author of Going Crazy Over the SAT, poses the question, âÂÂAnd what of the stellar but nervous students who lose sleep in the run-up to the test and end up dead on their feet on test day?â  Staples brings up a decent point. Many great students prep for the SATs and are suddenly thrown off by some small variable. For students who do poorly on SATs there are many colleges that do not require the SATs or the ACTS (a standardized test similar to the SATs).
 FairTest, The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, has published news that over 815 four-year colleges do not use the SAT or ACT.