For many Northwood juniors, the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) is right around the corner. To ease your nerves for that perfect score of 36, listed below are some (definitely true) standardized testing horror stories that really happened. 

Collegebored Samaritan

Northwood alumni Alum Nai recounts what she describes as a historical moment. “I was sitting there about to take the PSAT when several large men in suits busted down the door to our testing room,” Nai said. “They held duffel bags containing $10,000 dollar checks which were distributed to each student.” In an official statement released by the almighty nonprofit organization, Collegebored, it was later revealed that they had returned the thousands of dollars they stole from students.

Nightmare Testing Day

“I remember the proctor telling us that we had to stay until they had collected all the exams,” senior Ech Zam said. “For some reason, it was taking the proctor over an hour and they were nowhere in sight.” After waiting for six additional hours, the proctor started handing back exams to students. The answer sheets were blank. The proctor stated that they were dissatisfied with the bubbling-in the students had done, as some students bubbled ever-so-slightly out of the lines. To remedy this mistake, they had erased every single answer. After a total of 48 hours, the students finally completed their exam.

Aae Cee Tea Arson 

In a story that made national headlines last year, a group of masked vigilantes stole a truck full of PSAT exams that were set to deliver to Northwood and burned all the exams. The masked vigilantes are believed to be part of a larger, rival organization known as the Aae Cee Tea (ACT), which provides a standardized test similar to Collegebored’s Es Aye Tea. They publicly stated that they seek to dismantle the Collegebored patriarchy by any means necessary. ACT founder and CEO Anne Archy justified its vandalism of public property with a quote from the founding principles prescribed in the Destruction of Injustices (DoI), which guarantees that “when a long train of abuses pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such [monopoly]…The history of the present King of [Collegebored] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these [innocent children].”