In June of 2018, many students from Ventura High School, and all over the country took the SAT.

When the scores came out more than a month later, students who took the SAT, myself included, got a shock. The College Board notified the test-takers that the math portions of the test had been drastically curved because too many students had gotten the answers to the questions correct. This “little” curve that the College Board made to the SAT lowered students scores significantly by a number of points.

Students all over the country were so enraged by the drop in scores that an online petition had been created on thepetitionsite.com to get the College Board to rescore the SAT without a curve. Sadly, the petition never got put into action.

In a Twitter poll conducted by The Cougar Press, students were asked if they noticed a decrease in their score after taking the SAT in June. Of the eighteen students who voted, fifty eight percent of them said “yes,” while forty two percent said “no.”

When I signed up for the August SAT, I thought that there was absolutely no way that the College Board could “mess up” the SAT a second time, but I was wrong. This time, once students had taken the test, it was made known that the August SAT answers had been previously leaked online. This was because the College Board had used the same SAT test in August as they did in October of 2017 in Asia. Now, you would think that the College Board would know if they re-used a test, but I guess not.

After taking the SAT in both June and August, I didn’t have good experiences. Maybe it was just a fluke that the College Board “messed up” two SAT tests in a row, but I believe it is incredibly unfair to students. After these two mishaps, I find it hard to trust the College Board.

Senior Connor Greene shares his thoughts on the College Board, “The College Board is money hungry and does not care about students in the slightest.”

When asked what his thinks about taking the SAT, Greene said, “Take the ACT [instead]..”

Senior Marea Gordon also commented her opinion on the College Board. “I think that the College Board sometimes abuses the fact that it has so much control over our futures. It is strange that the college bound teens of our generation need to be afraid of such a thing. I often feel like we are trying to be tricked instead of being helped like we should be in such an important stage of our lives.”