Nuture abilities rather than learning by rote

The clock ticks away audibly, with every second the tension grows. Every sound is amplified - pencils scribbling away, etching answers on to paper, meticulously filling in random answer bubbles, making a pattern of some sort. Every circle makes a difference that can change lives and futures.

It's that time again when the SAT fever is virulent and it seems about everybody is walking around shuffling about flashcards, sketching abstract graphs and reciting tenses and formulas. 2B Pencils are abundant, strewn over tables and found materialising from pockets, and abhorrent answer bubbles are revolving around dazzled heads.

For those of you unfamiliar with the nefarious SAT drill, it is a standardised test taken in high school by teenagers thinking about applying to universities. It tests maths, critical reading and writing skills and scores your performance on a rather gargantuan scale of 2,400 - a score that heavily influences your applications and rŽsumŽs.

So, for nearly four hours, just about seven times a year, hundreds of students crouch uncomfortably over creaking desks, their noses nearly up against their answer booklets, scratching out choices and guessing answers, armed with calculators, erasers and lucky coins.

Though the SAT gives a general overview of your academic brilliance, it is no way representative of it.

That's the problem associated with 'standardised' tests - you are looked at like a dreary fish in the ocean, expected to have the same abilities, tested on cognitive thinking and effective communication and nothing more.

But we are more than just beings that can multiply three digit numbers and juggle around convoluted words; we have a farrago of talents and abilities that cannot have numbers attached to them.

When we apply to universities, we like to think that our acceptance is a reflection of our achievements not a reward for an impressive number. We like to be taken seriously as a competent, well-rounded candidate that has done more than rote-learning and astute manipulation.

There is more to a person besides their academic potential that can do far greater good in the real world.

The SATs have lost meaning along the way, with people suffocating themselves with piles of work, in order to score above the sacred 2200. True, academics are an essential piece of the pie but to be truly savoury, you've got to have the filling.