One number: a score that could affect your whole life.

Standardized testing determines whether you are eligible to be accepted into certain colleges.  The college you attend influences your later career.  Do you see the domino effect taking place?

However, we all have to face it sometime or another if we want to go anywhere in today’s world: the ACT.  You can start preparing for it as early as you desire, striving for the high score of 36.

Most students take this test their junior year of high school and after seeing their score, decide whether or not they want to take it again.  It determines if you are able to receive academic and athletic scholarships to the college of your choice.

The biggest problem with this is that it shows nothing about the student besides one standardized test score.  Maybe you are a bad test taker but have all A’s; that’s too bad.  All that hard work you did in high school goes right down the drain.

Who needs to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” to succeed at their ACT?  I’ll give you a hint, no one.  Don’t take this the wrong way; your teachers do everything in their power to help you mentally prepare for the ACT.  The question is, is it enough?

What about all the long nights you spent studying for the tests you still failed, and all the hand cramps you got from trying to scribble down the notes yourteacher put on the board?  Let’s not forget having homework in every class and not having nearly the amount of time to do it.

Shouldn’t all this hard work to get an A in a class count for something?  The answer is yes.  We should have a score based on our grades throughout the four years we spend in high school.  Maybe they should call it a GPA.