One-three-letter acronym has terrified high school students all over America for the past .
            
  This is one test that has mortified and terrified high school students beyond .
            
their wildest imaginations.  It has been the one test that seems to hold the key to their entire futures, but .
            
should it?  No.  The SAT's does not really test a person's aptitude, but the way they can take this .
            
particular test.  Students who do well on the SAT aren't necessarily smart; they may just be good at .
            
manipulating the system.  Some well known outstanding colleges have even begun to question the .
            
validity of using the SAT's to measure the competency of a person applying to college.  If the SAT's .
            
measure a person's intelligence, what does it say for the student who has a 3.9 GPA but a 750 SAT .
            
score?  .
            
	To measure persons aptitude on a single test is unreliable and unfair to say the least.  Putting so .
            
much emphasis on a test that neither tests the knowledge or the mental competence of a person is a .
            
very crude manner of selecting college candidates.  Ironically, even the College Board, which is in .
            
charge of the SAT's, also agree that the test is not truly meant to test a person's intelligence.  They .
            
refer to the test as "a relatively good way of predicting how well a student will do in college.  It's a .
            
measure of a student's ability to answer questions at a given place and time."  If what the College .
            
Board says is true, than why should the test matter so much?  There's a big difference in going to a .
            
SAT prep course and learning how to navigate it than actually being smart and literate enough to know .
            
what "surreptitious" means.  .
            
	Richard Atkinson, the psychologist who is President of the University of California, suggested .
            
in a speech that the SAT was not a valid way of judging a student's academic aptitude.  Atkinson .
            
suggested what many others have been thinking all along, that the SAT doesn't necessarily measure .