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Every year, masses of high school students take a massive test to rank and sort them in the post-high school world. The SAT has been developed to let colleges and universities have one more marker to access the abilities of those about to enter their institutions. These tests, however, should not cost high school students money and all the information pertaining to their usefulness should be made readily available.

Last year’s test scores for Johnston County, N.C., were finally higher than the state average. Johnston now has the lowest participation rate for the SAT in the area. Their advice to students: only take the SAT if you have good grades and plan on attending a four-year institution.

As participation has gone down, the scores for the SAT have gone up. This does not bode well, however, for the students of Johnston County. At one school, Smithfield-Selma Senior High, guidance counselor Randy Swann described the initiative.

“I see whether they’re actually planning on going to a four-year college, or if it’s just a possibility, or if they want to go to a community college,” Swann said. “If they do (plan to go to a two-year college) it’s not necessary for them to spend their time and money taking the SAT.”

Swann continued, “If you haven’t done well in your grades — if you have a 1.5 or a 1.6 (GPA) or whatever — it follows that you’re probably not going to do well on the SAT. What good is taking the SAT if you’re not going to do well in it?”

It is after this speech that Swann normally hands a student the forms to register for the SAT and lets them decide.

One student, Victoria Strickland, heard Swann’s speech, and because she planned on going to a two-year school and eventually transfer to another school to get a teaching degree, she decided not to take the SAT. Only later that same day, after a friend had mentioned that some community colleges used the SAT as a placement test, possibly allowing her to avoid more remedial classes, did she reconsider her decision not to take the SAT.

With all of the pressures that students already go through in trying to make decisions about going to an institution of higher learning, for counselors to make ready some information and not the rest is unfair and deprives students of everything they need to make educated decisions.

However, if a student has come all the way to the counselor’s office, the information should be completely available, and withholding it should not be a way of keeping the school and by extension the county’s SAT score average higher.

This is a staff editorial from The Technician at North Carolina State University. This editorial was distributed by U-Wire.