“I decided freshman year that I wasn’t going to play the game,” she said. “I didn’t even study for my SAT.”

At first, my friend’s bold statement was shocking—not studying for the SAT? It seemed a little rash, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had a point.

I understand why colleges want to take a standardized look at all of their applicants. I would too, if I had to compare tens of thousands of students. In its beginning, the SAT was just that—until entrepreneurs saw a business opportunity. Since then, it’s become more of a measure of whether students can spend the time and money taking prep classes, practice tests, and tutoring sessions.

As much as it makes me cringe, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t give in to the game. I gave up part of my summer to study for the SAT and begrudgingly drove myself to prep classes. As the two weeks dragged on, I realized I was only doing it for reassurance that I had a shot at keeping up with my peers.

More surprisingly, I realized that the class didn’t teach me anything new in terms of the academic material, but rather how to take the exam. If SAT prep companies have managed to break down what’s supposed to be a reasoning test into something essentially formulaic, isn’t that a pretty surefire sign that it’s no longer what it was intended to be?

Almost everyone who takes the SAT gets roped into spending some amount of money. The test itself has a fee, but it often accompanies the larger costs of prep books and prep classes. By the time the whole process is over, it all adds up.

In an article last May, The Fiscal Times wrote that data from the College Board showed that students from families with annual incomes of less than $20,000 scored approximately 400 points lower than those with annual family incomes greater than $200,000.

This disadvantages students who often plan on using college as a means to create more promising futures for themselves. Shouldn’t they be rewarded for trying make college an option rather than set back by an unnecessary financial road block?

By the time we graduate, we will have learned so much more than what could possibly be tested on one exam, so why should that one exam have the weight that it does in college applications?

Because the SAT clearly can’t test everything we learn in high school in one exam, maybe the college board should test on how well we can live on our own, do our own laundry, or cook our own food if it wants a standardized comparison of how prepared students are for college.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t prepare for the SAT—we should definitely put in our best efforts—but we should treat it how we treat our other tests, because, in reality that’s what it is. As hard as it is to believe, it is just another test, so it shouldn’t become another exhausting hurdle in an already consuming junior year.

This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on March 12, 2014.