[dragontamer]

Its so weird to hear that.

My entire college-bound peer group took the SAT twice, once without the essay and once with the essay. Literally all of us, every single friend/acquaintance in my year. Most of us took the PSAT (practice SAT) to get used to the "timing" of multiple choice. (When you're low on time, its time to start guessing and moving way quicker)

The exceptions were the military dudes, who left for the Iraq / Afghanistan wars. So they had no need to take the SATs.

We all were worried about how the essay would be graded, whether or not colleges would accept the essay score, or whatever. Some of us even took alternative tests (ACT) in addition to the SAT (I only took the SAT twice).

For us, the essay thing was announced long-in-advance and we literally strategized our college acceptance plans around it. I don't know who figured out the essay announcement, but... it was very well known in my bubble.

[jbluepolarbear]

I took the presat and got one of the highest scores in my city. I wasn’t in any college group, I barely had the attention span to go to school. I was told by my counselor that I should take the sat to get into college, so I did. I was a senior at the time of taking it (2005) and there was a lot of controversy around the test that year. My family was so poor that I didn’t even know if college was going to be an option for me. because of this test I was unable to get any scholarships for English programs, but, since my math score was in the 95th percentile, I was able to get a small amount of engineering scholarships. I still ended up accruing a lot of student loan debt and ultimately dropped out because I never wanted to do engineering.

[satyrnein]

Your differing experiences are an interesting data point in the question of whether the SAT is a fair and neutral evaluation.