A bright young woman decided to take an American university entrance exam to compare it with UK A Levels, and she was taken aback by her results. We've all likely seen a TV show or film where US students discuss taking their SAT exams, often involving intense study sessions, anxiety over the results, and characters comparing their scores.

Erin Meryl, a huge fan of the 00's Netflix show Gilmore Girls, noticed that the character Rory Gilmore - known for being an exceptionally intelligent teenager aspiring to attend Harvard University - frequently worries about these exams, and Erin wanted to see if she could outscore her. Erin, an economics student at Cambridge University, shared her experience on her TikTok page @erinmerylstudy. The avid reader and A* student, who has amassed over four million likes for her study tips, remarked: "Why do Americans get so worked up about the SAT? It is not that hard."

Erin continued: "You cannot watch an American television show without them going on and on about how hard the SAT - it's kind of done as a university entrance exam it seems. And so, I thought I have nothing better to do this Friday morning, so let me attempt an SAT practice test to how hard it really is."

According to The Princeton Review, the SAT is an entrance exam used by most colleges and universities in the US to make admission decisions. It is a multiple-choice, computer-based test administered by the US College Board.

"The purpose of the SAT is to measure a high school student's readiness for college, and provide colleges with one common data point that can be used to compare all applicants," states The Princeton Review.

Erin added: "I kind of get annoyed when they get so worked up about it, saying 'oh my god, it's the hardest thing ever', when whenever I look at it, it just looks like the 11 plus exams."

She found that after examining an SAT practice paper, it included two sections of reading and two of maths, reviewing them on a tablet and recording her responses in a notebook.

Erin confessed during her test experience: "So I am a couple of questions into the reading section, and it is literally like 'which word fills the gap to complete the sentence?'."

She realised that many of the queries were simple comprehension tasks. She was taken aback by the elementary nature of the first question in the maths section, where students are asked to calculate 10% of 470.

"It gets harder but this first module is literally just GCSE level maths," Erin contended, noting that the use of calculators is permitted in the exam. "You don't get the hardness that you would get even in A Level maths."

Despite her conclusions, Erin acknowledged she had not worked against the clock, an element she said could intensify the difficulty in an actual test environment. "But they're not objectively hard questions," she concluded.

Erin revealed her impressive SAT results, scoring 30 out of 33 for one English section and 31 out of 33 in the second. In maths, she achieved 25 out of 27 on the first section and 26 out of 27 on the second, racking up a total score between 1470-1520.

In reaction to her scores, Americans commented on what these results could mean for university prospects. One commenter stated: "That score could get you into Harvard."

Meanwhile, another indicated: "The scores you got put you in the top 97%-99%."

A further commenter noted: "I looked up if 1470 was a good score and it said you scored higher than 97% of people and it said 1520 was enough to safely get into Harvard or Yale."

An American man clarified the nature of the SAT test: "The SAT isn't meant to be difficult in terms of content; it's designed to assess your problem-solving ability in a timed setting, not necessarily if you know the content."

However, some pointed out that timing is crucial when it comes to the SATs. One person argued: "Doing the test untimed defeats the whole purpose, lol. The time crunch is most of what makes it hard."

Another echoed this opinion, insisting: "The whole point of the SAT is the limited time. If you remove the timing, your score means nothing."

Another explained the SAT's difficulty level from their perspective: "American here, I've never heard anybody that said it's hard. It's not designed to be hard. A 1500 is pretty good, though. Not quite Ivy League level, but close."