I think my least favorite part of the WASL is explaining why, when 4x is equal to 8, x is equal to 2. Or maybe it’s listening to teachers read every single word of the script explaining how to turn the pages of our test booklet. And those other tests like the SATs and PSATs aren’t too fun either.

For me, the SATs are still a year or so off, but the WASL is now. So while 9th, 11th, and 12th graders are sleeping in until 10:00, I’ll still be at school bright and early, sitting down to take a two week long test, obsessing way beyond reason that if I do something wrong my college career has ended already.

Luckily, I have been assured by everyone from my mother to my counselor to college students that WASL scores don’t matter; they are simply school and district requirements.

That doesn’t mean they don’t matter, though. The graduating classes of 2008 and beyond are required to pass the reading, writing and math WASL sections in order to graduate.

If you don’t care about graduating then there’s another reason you can try hard: the better you do, the more money the school gets.

Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, any public school wishing to receive federal funding must submit its students to some form of a state-wide assessment. The more students that pass, the more money the school gets. Of course, this has led to a multitude of problems. Schools that were already struggling continue to slip downwards. Curriculums become based around the material on the tests and many people say the system is designed to push low performers out of school completely.

Briyana Bembry, a Garfield sophomore, took the WASL in middle school but attended a prep class anyways. “I wanted to do it just to prepare because this year you have to pass. It was just to be safe,” she says. With over 90% of Garfield students passing the reading section of the WASL last year, it’s not a surprise that only around four students from the school attended the review section.

And then there’s that other test that people always talk about. The one that every other person claims they have the secret to acing: the SAT, or the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Almost everywhere you go, from Facebook to school, one can find ads bragging that their SAT prep program can lead anyone to a perfect score.

How much of an influence does the SAT really play on your college admissions? It depends, according to Rebecca Varon, a 2006 graduate of Garfield and a sophomore at Haverford College. Working in the admissions office, she’s gotten an idea of what things are important on a student’s application. Haverford, a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, only receives around 3500 applications per year (a small number in the world of college applications).

This gives the sorters time to take an in-depth look at all aspects of a person and admissions are based more on personal qualities.

Rebecca recalls a sample application she saw at Haverford of a girl applied as a valedictorian of her 1000-person class. She had a 4.0 GPA and a 2390 on her SAT. Her extra curriculars, though, consisted of treasurer of the cooking club, and not much else. She wasn’t admitted.

Rebecca cautions that this isn’t always the case. “Small schools tend to be more personal, but big schools look more at your grades,” she says. Many schools have generators to plug your GPA and other scores into so you can find out whether you would get in or not. The SAT or the ACT are quick and easy ways to measure students up against each other, a task that can be hard to do without that sort of common ground.

The objection to SAT isn’t just from the students who take it. Universities from around that country are starting to take a look at the test and are starting to take steps back from it.

The now late former president of the University of California said “The SATs have acquired a mystique that’s clearly not warranted. Who knows what they measure?” Hundreds of colleges from around the country have made the test at least optional for admissions.

A main debate surrounding all standardized tests is scoring. Multiple choice tests that can simply be run through a computer certainly seem to have the advantage: there’s no bias and almost no chance for error.

As we all know, though, our beloved WASL is not entirely multiple-choice. It is filled with things you have to explain and justify and show every step of your reasoning for. Bias and time constraints therefore can affect scoring.

According to The Seattle Times most math problems warrant only around twenty seconds of scoring time, while those long essays we write get a short two and a half minutes. Agreement between scorers can also vary 60 to 85 percent.

Most high schoolers can find common ground over their aversion for the WASL. But even with all these reasons to dislike it the paramount reason seems to be its time wasting abilities. Though most students would gladly jump at a chance to only have three classes a day the WASL creates an exception. “It takes away from the momentum of things and sets everything off schedule. I’d much rather be using energy on something more worthwhile,” says sophomore Laura Muñoz.