Lecture on the concept of merit

Unlike the video that we saw on today's lecture, me and my friends went to college precisely according to our SAT scores.

None of us were extraordinary (at least according to our school) like students shown in the video. We were not president of any sort, and we did not find any kind of school activities appealing. Yet however, some of us wrestled, debated, played chess, and even some warmed bench of JV football team in his senior year. At our lunch, we always grumbled about how unpleasant it is to have intimate physical competition with half naked men, how pathetic it is to act interested and passionate about issues and debate about it, when it would produce no actual result nor change, and we always made fun of Steve, the benchwarmer. Yet Steve never seemed to be disturbed because he didn't like football and wasn't fit for playing it anyways. All those unpleasant moments were endured just so that we would get into a better college.

When we became Juniors, we all started to prepare for the SAT. Some of us went Kaplan or Princeton Review, some hired a tutor that cost $100 an hour, and some had more than just one tutor. There were five of us, and we all had at least 1100, and the score went up according to the money put in for the preparation. The highest was 1380, and he made into Berkeley, and he was the one that had two tutors flown from Los Angeles every weekend, each specialized in teaching Math and Verbal section preparation.

Just as mentioned before, we were all average students with GPAs slightly above the average. There was nothing that would differentiate us except for the SAT score and the essay in the college applications, and I can confidently say that the test is all about recognizing patterns within the problems.

All of the private SAT prep courses teach how to recognize patterns within the problems. Rather than explaining why B is the answer for the problem number 41, they focus on how B is most likely to be the answer, and the frustrating thing is that they are right about it. It is inevitable that someone would score higher when he/she is coached more. The problem with the SAT is that it does not test anything, yet it impacts whole lot when it comes to distinguishing relatively ordinary students like me and my friends. I used to believe essay part of college application is students' chance to show their character and potential, but now it seems that the SAT diminishes purpose of essays in college applications.