Standardized education

This Saturday, along with a couple hundred UB students and thousands of students across the country, I will be taking the Law School Admission Test. This exam, commonly referred to as the LSAT, will basically decide where I spend the next three years of my education.

This will mark the third time in my life and the eighth, ninth and 10th years of my education that will have been decided by one exam.

Looks of severe angst or fury can always be seen on the faces of people who have taken this standardized exam, but consider how much more reliable and straightforward it is compared to its close brother, the SAT.

At least the LSAT is true to its name, as it is called the "Law School ADMISSION Test," contrary to the Scholastic Aptitude Test, also known as the SAT.

They don't actually test any aptitude with that exam, just one's ability to do well on the test in order to get into a good college.

I know what they say. All high school teachers tried to tell you that your grades in your classes matter too, but really, no college is going to reject those people who score a 1600 on their SAT just because they failed government their junior year of high school.

The same goes for the LSAT. Everyone tries to tell you to concentrate on your classes in college, and that no law school will want you unless you have work experience, a 4.0 GPA and at least 20 different 300 or 400 level courses, and a few graduate level courses, just to be safe.

But that's not true.

Check with the admissions council of any law school, and they'll tell you that they weigh the applicant's LSAT score about 70 percent.

Far be it for me to complain about the heavy weighting towards standardized tests, though, for I am a product of the New York City public school system, whose motto might as well be, "We teach to the exam, no more, no less."

But at least with the LSAT, they're up front about it. Law schools will give you a percentage, so you know you have something concrete to strive for.

However, if you ask a college what you need to get on the SAT in order to be admitted, you're likely to be told, "Somewhere between 1000 and 1300," as if they're not going to accept you if you get over a 1300 on the SAT.

This kind of random, purposeless mystery surrounding a test and its desired results is ridiculous, and there is absolutely no need for it. Colleges need to take an example from law schools, find a number, and stick with it for consistency.

The great part about the LSAT, and I don't know if they did this on purpose or not, is that it very closely resembles the SAT, minus the math.

The math section on the SAT was always a contradiction to me. As someone who did so well in high school calculus that I got exempted from having to take any math here at UB, I was never able to understand a single question in the math section of the SAT or any practice test that I took. They weren't actually testing math prowess, they wanted to know how well you could translate your reading skills into dealing with numbers.

So I'm glad that when they wrote up the LSAT, they dumped the math part of the SAT.

Another reason why the LSAT is a better exam is that it has nothing to do with the evil Educational Testing Service, which is the group that administers the SAT.

I can barely even type that unless I have a glass of holy water next to me, but I guess this soda will have to do.

Contrariwise, the LSAT is brought to you by the Law School Admission Council. Again, a very straightforward name for a very straightforward exam.

The ETS doesn't test education, like its name would suggest, it just tests your ability, and your willingness to lay down $15 to take an exam that doesn't actually test anything, but still, mysteriously so, decides your collegiate future.

Luckily, unlike next year's incoming freshman class, I did not have to take the new version of the SAT, which has a writing sample section. Unluckily, there is one such section on the LSAT.

However, the SAT and the ETS are so inane in their operations, that I would not be surprised if the writing section on the SAT was basically a bunch of essays and the test-taker had to choose the best one based on a random feature, chosen by the heads of the ETS.

So I'll be glad while I take the LSAT that it's operated completely differently than its supposed namesake, the SAT.

The only part of the SAT that's better than the LSAT is, of course, the fact that the SAT starts at 9 a.m. most places, whereas the LSAT begins at 8:30 a.m., but I guess that's just something I'll have to deal with.