Standardized testing is meant to assess an individual’s mental abilities and compares them with others (DeWall and Myers392). Standardize tests can be one of two forms: an achievement or aptitude test. Achievement tests reflect your ability to regurgitate learned material while aptitude tests reflect the ability to learn new material (DeWall and Myers 392). Although standardize tests where not created to reflect a person’s intellect, they have become just that. An individual that scores a certain result on a standardized test is labeled intelligent by society, but is that an accurate assumption? Standardized tests are targeted to test specific skills therefore they cannot possibly represent a person’s overall intelligence which includes multiple skills. Standardized tests also only promotes convergent thinking, coming up with a single correct answer, instead of encouraging divergent, coming up with multiple solutions, or creative thinking (DeWall and Myers 366). Another drawback to standardized tests are that an individual’s score is influence by outside factors. Success on these tests can be prevented by self-doubt which may impair attention, memory, performance (DeWall and Myers 414). All of these factors prove that standardized tests are being misused as a gauge of intelligence. In order to be successful an individual must possess multiple skills and the ability to thinking differently depending on the situation. If standardized tests only measure one skill or thought process, then they are obviously not a good judge of an individual’s overall