Underclassmen took overachiever culture to a whole new level this past October by taking the Pre-Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, a test to prepare for a test whose main purpose is to prepare for a different test.

Though the PSAT is merely intended to prepare students for the SAT and give them the opportunity to earn National Merit Scholarships, MCPS unnecessarily treats it as a crucial test by forcing students to start preparing two years in advance with the PPSAT.

MCPS administers the PPSAT to underclassmen every fall to familiarize them with the PSAT and SAT and give them a general idea of how prepared they are to take those tests. Freshmen and sophomores take different tests for the PPSAT; freshmen take a practice test provided by Kaplan test prep and MCPS pays for sophomores to take a real PSAT for practice. But the PPSATs are needless stressors for underclassmen, who don’t yet need the pressure that upperclassmen face during the college admissions process. MCPS should stop requiring underclassmen to take the PPSAT.

Many students at Whitman have college tunnel vision — they see all of their actions in high school as a means of getting into an elite college. With this mindset, even a tenuous link to college admissions is enough to elevate a mundane test into one worth obsessing over. The PPSAT mandated by MCPS seemingly endorses this harmful outlook by sending the message that students need to prepare two years in advance for the slim opportunity of earning a National Merit Scholarship.

By magnifying the significance of the PSAT in the eyes of students, the PPSAT encourages students to spend unnecessary time, stress and money preparing for the PSAT, which bears little importance in the long run.

The College Board states that the best way to prepare for the PSAT is to take challenging academic courses and read widely, but some students pay over $1,000 to test prep companies in hopes of getting a National Merit Scholarship. Capital Educators, for example, charges $1,595 for its PSAT prep course, which cancels out over half of the $2,500 National Merit Scholarship.

Contrary to what the PPSAT promotes, there’s no guarantee that students can prep their way to a National Merit Scholarship; it’s extremely difficult to achieve. Of the 1.5 million students who take the PSAT each year, only 3.3 percent of students qualify for recognition in the program, and a mere 0.5 percent of students — about 8,300 students — actually earn a scholarship. It’s not worth expending stress and money to prep for the small chances of earning a National Merit Scholarship.

The PPSAT induces underclassmen to participate in the insecurity-breeding grade obsession that consumes the academic lives of upperclassmen. It’s good for underclassmen to be aware of the college admissions process, but the PPSAT goes beyond that, forcing students to face the stresses of the college admissions process before they have any reason to. MCPS should stop requiring underclassmen to take the PPSAT.