Photo courtesy of Twitter | This PSAT meme trended on social media after students across the nation took the standardized test on Oct. 19.

Memes are an immense part of current teen culture. An example are the references to famous memes, like the Pikachu meme and VSCO girls, occurring here at Brophy or making appearances on Brophy students’ social media. Participants taking the PSAT signed a contract agreeing that they wouldn’t disclose any information of the PSAT to the public or discuss anything on the test. Yet in recent years, people have recorded videos or made subtle references to the PSAT, be it in memes or hilarious videos on TikTok and other social media.

Making PSAT memes could hugely affect your path to college, granted it isn’t often that someone is caught by the College Board. The results of being caught could be a detrimental factor to the path to college.

“It’s not just a matter of having a score cancelled, the college board can forbid you from taking any other College Board exam, this can be the SAT and the APs,” said Mr. Gil Martinez, a Brophy college counselor. The effects of getting called out for PSAT memes are huge possibly causing you to not attend any university.

Mr. Martinez also said, “No, none of my advisees have had their PSAT scores cancelled. Ms. [Mary] Novak, who is the coordinator of it all, has never said anything about a Brophy boy having their PSAT scores cancelled.”

The National Merit Scholarship, StudyPoint stated, is awarded to the top 7,600 juniors in the nation. These top 7,600 are picked from an approximate 1.6 million juniors who have taken the PSAT. Mrs. Alexandra Harmon, the Boys Hope Girls Hope college success manager, said, “As far as I know, none [of the scholars] have qualified for the National Merit Scholarship,” it is not likely to receive the National Merit Scholarship, for even in Boys’ Hope Girls’ Hope, which is an academically driven scholarship program, receiving the NMS is a tenacious achievement.

In the last two years, there have been remarkable amounts of memes made on social media platforms. However, there has been a slight drop in the number made from 2018 to 2019. As Mashable said, “… test memes are in slightly lesser supply on the internet this year. They’re still there, though.”