Why vocabulary should not be tested in the SAT

        So the SAT is kind of a big deal right? According to some adults, it is a test that can determine the fate of your future– A test whose score decides what college you get into; a college that affects what career you will choose; a career which will destine what pay you get; a pay that categorizes you into your economic class… and forever influences your life. Now that’s what I call a lot of pressure.

        So “2400” is the magical score that every student yearns to get. Of course it’s highly unlikely that a person will get an absolutely perfect score. For some people it is the grammar, math or reading comprehension that throws them off– for me it is the complex vocabulary. It simply makes no sense to me why a college admission test would contain a farcical amount of vocab to which most people are unintelligent. For one thing, using big language is not a measure of intelligence. Instead all it successfully does is confuse others. Reason being: People don’t use big words when talking because there is no need to. As awesome as it would be to know every word in the world, there would be no end to memorization, and ultimately no purpose since most of those words are now obsolete.

        Now I can probably guess what you are thinking. Why is she using big vocab when trying to argue that big vocab is unnecessary? Well, that would simply be since I was forced to memorize a list of words in order to do well on the test.  

        Memorization–what an awful way to try to pass a test.  Unlike fundamental math concepts (which have been drilled in to student’s minds starting from kindergarten) vocab is a subject that is commonly ignored in most schools, and therefore is rarely learned. While the SAT claims to be a test that can be taken without any prior knowledge, how can you answer vocab questions if you have no clue what anything means? It’s not like there are formulas at the top of the page that you can plug prefixes or roots into, like in the math section.  And if English isn't your major language, you are simply out of luck. Because guess what? You need to randomly guess an answer anyway– unless you want to fail a test that can supposedly determine the fate of your life.

        So call this an exaggeration if you will, but there is absolutely no reason why guessing what lexis means will help determine how intelligent a person is.