It’s that time of year again, folks! If you’re a senior or junior in high school, you’ll know what I mean. Standardized tests. They say that your entire life leading up to this point is a pie with several crucial pieces: grades, extracurricular activities, essays recommendation letters and last, but certainly not least, standardized testing. They say each part of the pie matters, but in reality, some are just a bit tastier to the college admissions process than others. For me, as well as a majority of high school students, standardized testing is a total pain in the a*s. I mean why work so hard in school when a test might as well pull your application down or close the doors to your dream school?

Honestly, standardized tests are more than just a way to test one’s college readiness or general knowledge of all things high school. It’s a game with a strategy that can, at times, be extremely unfair. I say unfair because like anything in life, there are levels or tiers to an opportunity, and as you get higher and higher up on the tiers, it becomes easier and easier for you to excel compared to those still stuck on level one.

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Tier 1: There are a couple ways to prepare for tests such as the SAT and ACT, but one of the most easily accessible methods is through the internet. Websites like Khan Academy offer free test prep based on past practice tests and your general strengths and weaknesses in specific areas. It’s a great way to bump up your scores without a price and receive instant feedback on your progress.

Tier 2: A bit pricier than the free practice websites, SAT/ACT textbooks offer a great way to prepare for the test by maniacally going through every practice test, spotting errors and reviewing the same type of problems over and over until you finally understand why that right triangle has to be a 30-60-90. Textbooks are pretty effective and often hours upon hours of uninterrupted practice time (yay).

Tier 3: Now, this is where things get real pricey. The cost of nailing your SAT or killing that ACT can range from the hundreds to thousands (per hour). Most standardized tutoring classes are not free and definitely not readily available to all high schoolers. If you do pay attention in class, write notes and finish the weekly homework, you have a great chance at increasing your score by a pretty wide margin. The more classes you take, the more you master the test-taking techniques needed to receive your ideal score. All with a not-so-pretty price tag.

So my problem with standardized testing is not the rigorous night before study I eventually end up doing, nor the weeks of preparation skipping out on fun activities and agonizing over simple math problems. My problem with standardized testing is the unfair advantage those of higher socioeconomic backgrounds have over low-income students.

According to TIME magazine, the gap for achievement tests between wealthy and poor individuals has grown to a staggering 60 percent since the 1960s. Moreover, white and Asian students are far more likely to score higher than their black and Latino counterparts. If the data isn’t startling enough, it appears that standard tests were basically created to keep certain people out of higher learning institutions. They were first developed in the 1940s to exclude Jewish students from the Ivy Leagues. However, Stanley Kaplan, a Jewish man rejected from many schools solely because of his heritage, developed a way to beat the prejudiced system. Now, Kaplan test preparation classes and textbooks help others beat the horrors of testing and succeed.

In my eyes, there should not be such a heavy reliance on standardized testing over the other pieces of the pie in a student’s life. Standardized tests are not a mark of intelligence or academic rigor, they are a mark of strategy, practice and memorization especially for those who can afford the teaching. It’s important to remember that students are not numbers, so why let one test score define years of hard work and determination?