It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.

Now the new debate surrounding the SAT exams, did they get a bum rap?

Some colleges that made SAT scores optional as a criterion for admission are now making them mandatory again.

And there have been two recent articles in the New York Times, one a policy piece by columnist

David Leonhardt and the other a personal essay by the writer Emmy Neatfeld, arguing that the SATs actually

enhance the chances for diverse and disadvantaged and marginalized high school students

to get into college at all, to get into good colleges, not the other way around, as has been

previously believed. We'll talk to Emmy Neatfeld and take your calls now.

Emmy Neatfeld is a freelance journalist, best known as the author of Acceptance, A Memoir,

published in 2022. Her New York Times op-ed is called How the SAT Changed My Life.

Emmy, thanks so much for coming on.

Welcome to WNYC.

Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Can you start for listeners not familiar with your work,

what some of your life was like when you were in high school,

very difficult circumstances in multiple ways,

and why you found solace, you used that word, not oppression, in studying

for the SATs?

I had a really difficult adolescence. Both of my parents suffered from mental health issues,

and I myself was taken to the doctor. I received 12 different psychiatric medications between the ages of 12 and 14.

And I had always been a studious child. But when I was 14, I was sent to a locked residential

treatment center, one of those places with bars over the windows and a padded isolation room where instead of going to

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