1510

To the high school students who are curious what I received on my SATs, it was a 1510. That was my highest score, which I got on my third try. It’s strange because my parents never pushed me in school. I didn’t really do very well on my PSATs, for instance, and it probably wasn’t until my junior year of high school when I started visiting colleges that I knew I wanted to go to MIT and started studying for the SATs. I think I got in the 1300s on my first try–definitely not good enough for MIT.

Overall, my score breakdown was 710 Reading, 800 Math, and 740 Writing, so 2250 total score as it was known in 2006. It’s fascinating because even back then, I had this strange feeling of unfairness associated with the SATs. The fact that you could just purchase exam preparatory courses to boost up your score was something that didn’t exactly sit right with me. It felt like a form of cheating, and a slippery slope to a life that you didn’t necessarily deserve. Are you really that smart because you’re able to sit down and do some arithmetic and dissect a bunch of passages you’re not interested in?

Yet, don’t get me wrong, I do think the SATs are not completely meritless. It takes a lot of effort for most people to receive a high score, and effort is not unimportant: it demonstrates that you care. I think the important thing to remember is to not take the SAT number too seriously because, either really high or really low, it’s not necessarily an accurate gauge of intelligence. Scholastic potential, perhaps; intelligence, probably not.