If I learned anything from the great PARCC/CMAS catastrophe last year, it’s that the hatred students harbor for standardized testing is unstoppable, like a wildfire made of bulldozers. I’m not about to try to tame it, but merely redirect it; I’m merely trying to say that no one should be mad that the Colorado Department of Education is switching from the ACT to the new SAT.

     Everything you hated about the SAT is long gone now:  the dreaded guessing penalty has been abolished, the ten sections have been trimmed down to three (reading, writing, math), and those weird vocab words that literally never come up outside the SAT (panacea? What’s panacea?) are long gone.

     In fact, there’s a lot to love about the new SAT: there are just 154 questions, while the ACT has 215; and you get one minute and ten seconds per question, which is easy going compared to the ACT’s breakneck pace of forty-five seconds a question. It’s also going to be easier to prepare for, since College Board will provide access to practice materials through a suite of test prep materials, including apps, email systems, downloadable tests, and lessons through Khan Academy – the ACT, meanwhile, still keeps it’s test materials behind paywalls that limit access.

     And while a better test is great and all, it should be noted that money was also part of the CDE’s decision. College Board’s bid for the esteemed position of Colorado’s standardized college entrance exam would cost the board $14.8 million dollars, while the ACT would’ve set them back $23 million, Chalkbeat reports. If these tests are comparable, – and for argument’s sake we’ll say that they still are, and the that testing Gods at College Board know what they’re doing, even though the new SAT is too young to give it real legitimacy yet – then choosing between the ACT and SAT basically came down to choosing between paying $14.8 at McDonalds or $23 million at Burger King; when it comes to that kind of money, the differences in specific content become negligible. Besides, the new SAT – if it’s all it’s cracked up to be – is a superior product. To use College Board’s words: “The 2016 SAT is based on the latest research on the skills colleges value most.” If you thought standardized tests needed to progress past the antiquated and the status quo, then look no further than the new SAT

     So yes, change can be good. Changing to the SAT is going to save the CDE money, and it’s going to give all students in Colorado access to a test which is most likely going to be substantially fairer than the ACT – it’s more in line with modern ideas about education, it lets you take your time, and it gives you all the practice materials you’ll need for free. Take a deep breath. The new SAT is a good thing.

     But there are still outcries over time wasted preparing for a test which is apparently now defunct, and that’s no small thing. The ACT has been such an integral part of academic life for Colorado students that test prep isn’t measured in months, but years. The first time I ever took an ACT practice exam was in sixth grade. By the time we’re Juniors, many students are ready to take the test blindfolded – and there are many of those students who will not be able to pay to take the ACT, for a number of reasons, and only have the one standardized test date to hitch their college aspirations to. The CDE wasted those people’s time. I’m not about to say they didn’t. We can hope that it’ll be worth it in the end – I certainly think it will be – but they did waste those people’s time.

     The ACT was wasting our time, too. Anyone who’s ever taken the ACT math session can tell you that there are questions that bear little relevance not only to the real world, but even to our own academic histories, and students are forced to spend weeks on end trying to master problems they were never taught to solve. Weeks and months are spent trying to raise composite scores by one or two points – which can be a matter of getting one or two more questions right. The ACT has been known to underrepresent the abilities of disabled and marginalized students, and cannot determine college success on its own – even if it is often treated like it can by high schools and colleges alike. The ACT wasn’t perfect just because we were used to it.

     So if you’re mad your time got wasted, you might want to be mad that so much time has to be spent on test prep at all – that there’s such a huge difference between what we learn in school and what ‘predicts college success’ that we have to spend so much time learning how to take any test – weather it’s the ACT or the SAT.

     The CDE has stated that the new SAT aligns better with Colorado’s current educational standards, and that could mean less time wasted on test prep. That’s what we, as a student body, should be demanding – a test that fits naturally into Colorado’s academic ecosystem, and not one that bends the schools to fit its demands.