![\"sat](\"\/\/www.catharsisit.com\/hs\/files\/2013\/03\/what-does-sat-stand-for-1.jpg\")
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currently, the sat doesn’t stand for anything—it is just the name of the exam. however, that hasn’t always been the case. since its introduction in 1926, the sat has taken on more than one official name. keep reading to learn more about the history of the sat and why it’s no longer associated with those names.<\/p>\n
for the majority of its history, from the \u201820s up until the early \u201890s, the test was the \u201cscholastic aptitude test\u201d. so why did they scrap that?<\/p>\n
besides sounding like a cold, robotic form of torture (which you may or may not think the test actually is), the original name of the sat didn\u2019t sit right with a lot of people. \u201cscholastic\u201d means academic, and \u201captitude\u201d means innate skill; it implied that they were able to test you on how well you were bound to perform in school settings. even if you think the sat is a pretty good measure of iq\u2014and it\u2019s not an iq test\u2014there\u2019s a whole lot more that goes into academic performance than just that, including motivation, social skills, creativity, and more. your \u201cscholastic aptitude\u201d is much more complex than what the sat tests you on. so they changed it! great.
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for years, nobody really understood the change that the college board made. in 1993, the company started giving what we now know as the sat subject tests (initially called the \u201csat ii: subject tests\u201d). the original sat was renamed the \u201csat i: reasoning test\u201d, and altogether they became the scholastic assessment tests.<\/p>\n
it made sense that they took out the \u201captitude\u201d from the original name, since that\u2019s what was causing the problem, but officially the original test was now called a \u201creasoning test,\u201d which sounds more like an iq test than it does a \u201cscholastic assessment\u201d. and the individual test wasn\u2019t called the \u201cscholastic assessment test i\u201d. that long form was only applied to the tests collectively. so what did sat stand for, then?<\/p>\n
years later, the college board finally cleared it up. sat didn\u2019t stand for anything at all.
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it\u2019s pretty weird to think that an abbreviation could stand for nothing at all, but that\u2019s what the college board says about the sat. the point of it is pretty simple: whatever words they used in the name (like \u201captitude\u201d), were automatically a possible target for critics to aim at. by taking away the words, they kept the brand recognition of the letters \u201csat\u201d but got rid of any other associations.<\/p>\n
it\u2019s pretty similar to how kfc took the words out of their logo to avoid having \u201cfried\u201d give them an unhealthy image. but that has to make you wonder: who do they think they fooled?
\npersonally, i think that\u2019s not possible. it\u2019s clearly an abbreviation when it\u2019s all caps like that\u2026. so maybe we should use lowercase and start calling it \u201cthe sat\u201d, rather than spelling out the letters when we say it.<\/p>\n
really speaking, sat is almost like a brand. the new coke, the new ford mustang. the fact that it once actually stood for something has become a piece of trivia. you\u2019re better off knowing what the test is testing than what it actually stands for. now crack open the new official guide and learn something that is actually useful.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
though sat used to stand for “scholastic aptitude test,” it now stands for … nothing. sat is just an initialism and no longer an acronym. it’s a one-named brand just like beyonc\u00e9 or coke. curious to know why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[36,59],"ppma_author":[24883],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n