These young kids today.

So Instapundit links to some fucking whiner 35-year-old bitching about the SATs.

I never read so much pissing and moaning in my life. And he got to use a calculator for the math part.

When I took the SATs back in 1977 and 1978 (in other words, right around the time said pisser and moaner was busily being born), there was no such thing as a "SAT preparation course". You signed up, you got your booklet, you (maybe) did the practice test in the booklet, and you went and took the fucking test. And no, you didn't get bathroom breaks then, either. We'd been taking standardized tests like the SAT ever since elementary school and the Iowa Tests or whatever the hell they were called. Oh, and I forgot, I took the PSAT in 1976, too.

So without any of the modern-day claptrap bullshit surrounding SATs, I scored somewhere in the high 1300's out of 1600. NOBODY got 1600 in those days. Not even the class geniuses.^* That shit didn't start until companies started selling SAT preparation tutoring, classes and materials. I remember somebody back in college (I didn't really start college till 1984 even though I graduated from high school in 1978) telling me they got 1600 on their SATs. I laughed in his (or her, can't remember now) face. Then I found out that kids were getting perfect scores on SATs, and why -- because they were being prepared specifically for the damn things. Same BS of elementary school kids today being "taught to the test" for ISTEP.

Then, in 1990, when I was 31 years old and hadn't taken a standardized test in 12 years, I took the GREs and scored...hmm...WTF...630 and 650? Can't remember for sure but both of them were well over 600. Again, no calculator, nothing but #2 pencil and scratch paper that had to be handed in with everything else. Oh, and no prep. I walked in cold and got those scores.

I walked into the grad director's office with my scores and as it happened, he and my soon-to-be grad adviser were looking over applications. I handed my scores to my prof and he looked at them, smiled, and handed them to the grad director. The grad director looked at them, tossed them on the desk, and said, "You're in." I was later told that I scored twice as high as most of the other applicants for the graduate program that year.

Bottom line, I really don't see why anybody would piss and moan so much about a fucking standardized test that everybody knows they have to take and for which so many resources are available to anyone who really wants to (over)prepare for them. IT'S JUST A TEST. RELAX.