Yale and SAT Chaos On A Saturday
Watching your kid go off to do the SAT is anxiety-inducing...but not for reasons you might think
Yesterday my daughter and I got on a train at Penn Station, bound for New Haven. Despite having applied to Yale twice, I’ve never been to the town in which it is located. I never did college tours as an undergraduate (at least not to places I really wanted to go) and I only went to the University of Texas as a grad school applicant.
Thanks to Amtrak and its woefully problematic scheduling, we arrived about 45 minutes behind schedule. This wouldn’t necessarily have been a problem, except that our schedule had us leaving New York at 8:50pm and arriving at about 10:30pm. Given that the SAT officially starts at 8am, with check-in beginning around 7:30am, getting in at 11:15pm was a bit of an issue. My daughter is certainly a night owl but even she concedes that a good night sleeps is optimal before taking an early morning exam.
In the end, we actually got to the hotel around 11:35pm because of the death of Ubers, deciding to walk the 0.5 miles from the station. My reasoning for this was pretty straightforward: we arrived earlier than we would have with the Uber, I got the last of my steps in (yay me), and a brisk night airing is decent for the constitution, right? Might even help with sleep?
Unfortunately (and I know this is quickly becoming the saga of our Yale/SAT adventure), there was one detail I didn’t factor in this whole calculation about how best to get a decent sleep last night, and that was having a hotel room directly above what sounded like the most happening disco tech in town. One of the parents, entering the breakfast room this morning, asked whether we got any sleep. It took me a minute to realize she was asking because of the noise that went on to well past 2am.
Believe it or not, though, none of these details was actually what inspired the anxiety felt by me and other parents this morning, or indeed my kid. No, Olivia was pretty diligent about calculating when she needed to wake up, using a sleep cycle calculator, even, to ensure that she wasn’t groggy. What actually proved problematic was the way in which the (I presume) college board representatives handled the whole checking in process.
“No parents on this floor!”
Okay, sure, but we actually have to like hand our kids stuff - their IDs, their phones, iPads?
“No parents!”
After a bit it became laughable. The lobby was overflowing, the elevators were seriously delayed (almost as badly as Amtrak).
Now, I get that the kids have to go off and do their own thing. I have no desire to take the SAT for my daughter or micromanage her experience of it. I’m not worried about her results (she’s already taken it and gotten a score good enough for Harvard). I totally trust her to manage everything she needs to do for this test entirely on her own. But I do have a problem when people (ostensibly in authority positions) are thoughtless about certain practicalities while also being (obviously) quite judgmental. Not to mention, the very fact of their disorganization the morning - kids and parents crowding the lobby as a result - was worrisome, and starting to make test-bound kids thing that they were doing something wrong.
As soon as the exam is over, my daughter and I are going to go and explore Yale a bit, grab some lunch, and ultimately prepare to head home. She then, like every other teenager, has to wait for two weeks to get her results (shout out to the GRE that shows you your score immediately after the test). Yet, our whole experience is just that little bit soured by the Yale test-taking experience so far.
My point with sharing this, too, is to try and help those planning for the SATs in the future. Take the time to investigate where you’re going to have your kid take the test. If you’re traveling, make sure you’re heading somewhere that isn’t going to feature late-night music that will, best case scenario, prove mildly disruptive to your sleep. Also make sure, if you can, that you’re not having to deal with early morning chaos thanks to poorly thought-out logistical details!
Kids need to get breakfast before the test. They also need calm. Doing well on the SATs, and I say this all the time, is about how well you know the test, on the one hand, but also how focused you are, on the other.