This year’s fall PSAT exam was administered only to Juniors, in contrary to past years when both Juniors and Sophomores took the exam. This change in testing was met mostly with bewilderment by the members of these classes.

Olivia O’Reilly, the only sophomore to be admitted to take the PSAT, had this to say concerning why she decided to take the exam: “I believe that…the extra year of taking the exam helps with college readiness” and that “I don’t want that to impact my chances at a scholarship or opportunity.”

Sophomore Alexandra Andrejczuk, who was among the majority of sophomores who did not take the test, regretted her exclusion from the test in the fall, stating that “I wanted to take the PSAT this fall because this would’ve allowed me to have a head start and know in advance what I need to work on.”

Along with the exclusion of sophomores from this year’s exam, the schedule that day was altered from years past, with 11th grades attending classes after the test and a regular school day for 9th, 10th, and 12th graders.

Many students were upset by this change, such as Junior Mikayla Nelson, who believed that “ the fact that everyone had to continue their regular classes was really unfair. One of my friends actually fell asleep during class from the excess amount of work that was pushed on her.”

Junior Rukhsar Faheem agrees, saying that, “from a typical student’s perspective, I would have liked to just get dismissed because that test was long and tiring.”

The sophomore class will not be taking the PSAT until spring of 2017.