Can’t use a calculator in English: Only in the PSATs

Katherine Quezada

Crimson Chronicle Reporter

PSAT testing on Wednesday  was a long and stressful day for all students who weren’t seniors. A three and a half hour long exam, testing knowledge in math and English was distributed not only to students in LAUSD but to schools all over the country.

This exam was a supposed ‘practice’ for the upcoming SATs for underclassmen, yet we were also told this exam was a qualification for Merit Scholarships.

Personally, what I do not understand, if this is a way to qualify for scholarships why doesn’t school administration talk about it more to let students prepare on their own time?  Middle school students also take this exam so knowing about it is not new to freshman as well as for sophomores and juniors. One week prior to the test taking was when I found out students were being tested.

Social media is a big thing in today’s youth, and every year on the day of the PSATs after every student has completed the exam, students somehow get it to trend on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, etc. Now, does this mean because millions of students are talking about the test itself through social media, will our scores get cancelled ? Will we get in trouble for talking about “how many days it takes to read 30,000 words ?” After all we all did sign a contract saying we would not discuss this exam under any circumstances. Oh the irony.

With the tweets and memes going around all over, one very popular one was making fun of the “No calculator during the English section” rule. I including many others were not aware a calculator was needed for English. I still do not understand why that rule was made.

Overall. this exam did make a good topic to make fun of but should be taken seriously as the real SATs are approaching for anyone under the twelfth grade.

Hopefully, this exam made you realize you do not remember how to do any math whatsoever.  It should also make you practice how to flip pages back and forth pretty fast for the English section. Yay.

 

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