(December 10, 2009) -- “Show colleges what you can do.” SAT online ads present themselves at every webpage I go to, and I can do nothing but roll my eyes. It’s not their deceiving multicolored presentations, but their catch phrase that annoys me: “Show colleges what you can do.”

I started SAT prep classes at the beginning of the summer familiarizing myself with the test, vocabulary and test-taking strategies. Eight weekends of memorizing words, taking quizzes and spending afternoons with twenty other people in an enclosed room, ventilated only by an air conditioner. Some friends were made, SAT scores rose, and everyone was happy. But not quite. Apparently, my scores were still not good enough. 

I took a one-month break, but soon, I was back in those air-conditioned rooms, honing my SAT skills for another seven weeks. Joy. I attempted to perfect my critical reading, writing and math scores.

I have spent a total of fifty-two-and-a-half hours choosing answer choices A, B, C, D or E on SAT prep tests. I have spent a total of 132 hours feeling claustrophobic in enclosed classrooms reviewing those SAT prep tests. But that is nothing compared to what my parents sacrificed.

Nine hundred dollars for summer weekends and $770 for another seven weekends equals a grand total of $1,670 spent on SAT prep classes for their daughter, who apparently has no aptitude to study on her own. And now we’re all hoping that I get the score we want, so that I don’t have to continue with the classes.
  
I’m sure many people have gotten good SAT scores without having to sacrifice as much as I did. But going into my very prestigious SAT prep class and meeting many students who have invested way more money in three years worth of classes than I have, I realize just how artificial the whole system is.

So that student got a 2400. I wonder if that’s the same amount of money spent on buying the score. My parents can buy me a 1670. Now I only need to show colleges that I can do the rest.