The official site of the Torch, the student-run newspaper at Glenbrook North High School.

Torch

The official site of the Torch, the student-run newspaper at Glenbrook North High School.

Torch

The official site of the Torch, the student-run newspaper at Glenbrook North High School.

Torch

Mind your own score

Judgement day: ACT scores are up.

Invariably a deluge of chatter about scores flows through  the halls.  No matter how hard you try to escape it, your efforts will be futile. The score inquisition will reach you, and you will be interrogated.

The first line of questioning begins with: “How did you do?” The interrogator doesn’t want to start off too audaciously. Fine, that question seems fairly unobjectionable. But it doesn’t stop there.

Sometimes the next point of enquiry will be: “What did you get?”

It is all downhill from there. The interrogator wants to assign you a number. Don’t assuage this absurd appetite for comparison.

This sort of thing is predictable. It happens every time ACT scores are released. ACT score inquisitions only exacerbate the ubiquitous score competition existing between students, thereby creating an increasingly unhealthy environment in which students operate, turning amicable relationships into adversarial ones.

ACT score competition debilitates student relations, and it distracts from a more important focus on coursework.

The trap is so easy, the Naviance graphs so compelling. When you take it too seriously, you allow yourself to turn into a dot on a scatterplot. This is only made worse by score competition. Of course college applicants must play the game and perform their best on the test, but it is far from necessary to involve oneself in the results of another’s exams.

Almost as bad are the score advertisers. You or your friend got a 2400, a 36, an 800? Fantastic. The rest of the world doesn’t need  to know.

College application season is sufficiently replete with stress. Students can take a load off one another’s shoulders by ridding themselves of obsession over everyone else’s test scores. The solution is simple. Just don’t ask.