As of the 2023–24 school year, MHS is no longer hosting the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), according to Assistant Principal Jonathan Mach. The main reason for no longer hosting the SAT is that there are not enough volunteers to proctor the test, Mach added. However, there are possibilities to reimplement the test, Mach added.
Due to the issues of payment and training, the number of volunteers has been decreasing for a long time, Mach said. The monitors are often paid much less than they would usually make in their normal jobs and are under a large amount of pressure, Mach added.
“People in the community have to get trained and give their Fridays and Saturdays to prepare (for SAT proctoring sessions),” Mach said. “How can I get people to come in at 7:30 (a.m.) if they are being underpaid for their job? They count tests, proctor tests, and then submit them with their name knowing that if there was any mistake or anything they didn’t catch, they would be liable.”
When the number of volunteers started to decrease, many teachers stepped up to proctor the tests, Mach said. “I am so appreciative that teachers here, knowing they were severely underpaid, stepped up because of our students, and they were stepping up for the last two years,” Mach said.
The number of students from MHS taking the SAT on-site has also gone down over the years, with only a small percentage coming each year, Mach said. “When I first started here, we’d have hundreds of Milpitas students take it,” Mach said. “Last year, it was maybe seven and we were servicing mostly students from other schools (…) If it was 500 Milpitas students, I’m sure it would be different. But our teachers didn’t see all the familiar faces anymore.”
MHS has considered stopping hosting the SAT for a long time, Mach said. Even during COVID, MHS continued to host the SAT with specific social distancing conditions until College Board ultimately paused offering the test, he added. “Last year was the last because we were still begging people to work for a fraction of what they would normally get,” Mach said. “We were actually kind of the last ones (compared to other schools) to be able to have an on-site SAT that was a supersite.”
Another aspect that is causing the decline in SAT’s in general is many colleges’ decision to become test optional, meaning that they no longer require an SAT score, 2022-2023 MHS SAT coordinator Justin Nguyen said in an email. “With many colleges, including the UCs and CSUs, no longer requiring an SAT score as part of their application, the desire for students to take it has diminished,” Nguyen said.
The decreasing number of MHS students taking the test on campus is partly also because of College Board’s policies, Nguyen said. “Worse off, College Board does not prioritize our own MHS students who wish to take the test to be placed into taking it at our MHS site,” Nguyen said.
The decision to stop hosting the SAT is not a permanent one, however, Mach said. If colleges begin to require standardized tests again or College Board appropriately pays proctors, the SAT or a new test colleges create may be reimplemented, Mach added.
“I know that the UCs and CSUs are trying to figure out what the next test is in the future,” Mach said. At some point, somebody’s going to make whatever tests relevant and maybe colleges will pick it up at that point.”
Sophomore Abhinav Chakrad, who plans to take the SAT, feels that the school’s decision to stop hosting the SAT will take the resource of staying local away from students, Chakrad said. “I think fewer people will take the SAT because it is harder to find now,” Chakrad said. “If we can’t find it in our own school, it is going to be harder to find one and harder to make the time to find one.” With so much of the world changing, colleges will eventually change as well, Mach said.
“I think when the colleges come up with something different, things will change,” Mach said. “I think the colleges recognize that they need to change when the times change. Students back then were much different than the students now (…) Everything has to change just because the times are changing.”