With the trend of globalization, the SAT does not fit into the innovative mindset. Like most tests, the SAT measures convergent thinking, a thinking that states that there’s one possible answer for a given problem. However, there are already enough tests that measure the magnitude of convergent thinking. Numerous tests such as AP and state mandated tests already measure convergent thinking. More importantly, in today’s world, divergent thinking is much more important. Divergent thinking is defined as finding multiple solutions to a problem, in which individuals or teams are encouraged to practice creativity and set free the imagination to effectively solve problems. The large majority of America’s creative innovations and important western scientific achievements were based on divergent thinking e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and quantum mechanics; this is also the reason that the US is able to maintain the leading global power in today’s world. In essence, colleges, the quintessential places that shape the young minds of the future, should be more focused on this type of thinking as the ability to create novel, full functioning ideas becomes the key to success in the real world. SAT and other standardized tests do not serve this purpose and simply becomes a meaningless burden, which gave students much unneeded fuss.
In discussing such drawbacks and flaws of the SAT, one may ask what is the SAT good for. Isn’t there a reason that the SAT was put into practice in the first place? Perhaps the most legitimate reason for the SAT is that it functions as a measurement to counter grade inflation in high schools across the nation. It is true that Mr. Johnson’s English class in Washington is not quite comparable to Mrs. Smith’s English class in Montana in terms of grades and difficulties, so the SAT can serve as balanced platform on which the students can be measured with the same standard, thus the name: standardized test. However, if we take a closer look at what the SAT really tests, we would find that the SAT does not test the quintessential majority of knowledge students accumulate from school. The SAT math section only requires knowledge in up to Algebra 2; that’s essentially wasted knowledge for many students who well transcends simple algebra and spent lots of time on higher level math, such as trigonometry and calculus. The reading section consists of fill in blanks and passage questions, both of which required a great amount of vocabularies in order for students to obtain a good score. The passage questions require the test takers to formulate a single given answer choice regarding certain part of the passage within about one minute or less per question; this is absurd in a sense. The ability of choosing a correct given answer within less than one minute based on a passage that is essentially open to different interpretations is by all means admirable, but not essentially nor is it useful in fields other than mindlessly taking tests, which is certainly not what school is about. The writing section is more exciting in that students can actually express their opinion in an essay; however, they have to do so within 25 minutes. Students are supposed to develop a well-thought thesis and follow up with at least two decent examples from history and literature all within 25 minutes, which limits performance many good writers because they tend to take longer to fully develop their thoughts and argument. The grammar section is also “rigged” because regular English class simply does not cover topics such as parallelism and conjunction errors. Students are not trained to detect a subject verb agreement error, in which the subject and predicate are intentionally separated by a long and misleading prepositional phrase. The skill set required for the SAT is not something that is truly valuable to college education; it is merely some troublesome standard to which everyone is supposed to conform.