My family is low end of the 1% and I'm all in on OWS, that is, before the radicalism came around. I was there in NYC for a bit in their beginnings and it was cool but it has gotten bad.

Either way, I don't want a score to say how smart I am. It's a moral thing.

I think you're right it can be abused, bo_sox. Where it gets really bad is where people start using credentials of smartness as an argument. "I'm right. I got a 1600 on the SAT" (or went to Harvard, etc). Obviously it's never that explicit, but it's there all too often.

But I still think it has clear uses.

Yes, it does have uses, but it shouldn't be put in the same category as grades. If I wake up having a bad day going into it and I bomb the critical reading because I don't feel like thinking, hell, what can you do? Yeah, take it again, but then the second time looks like as much of a fluke as the first. Take it a third time? Sure, keep on wasting your time. That is a concern for me.

Grades are much more important in my mind, as is personality, because it says a lot about the effort you'll put in. My kindergarten teacher was brilliant and I still talk to her and she has a phrase.. she says no kid is born stupid, but a hell of a lot of them are lazy. I've never forgotten that because she's exactly right. The kids with a 0.8 GPA deserve a 0.8 GPA. Sure, there are outlying cases, but not many.

When I took the SAT, they had an experimental writing section, making the maximum possible score 2400, rather than 1600. Did they change it back?

nope the max is 2400 still

No, that's what it is now, but a lot of schools only look at 1600, because everyone knows that being able to write is completely useless in the days of txtng wtht vwls bcz evr1 knws wht i am sayng nEway

In other words, schools don't care about their English departments. Sad, huh?

I've never been happier that I only took the ACT.

there really isn't much difference between them, i have taken the act twice and the sat once (i am going to take it again soon) and my score were comparable for both test and i didn't think either one was harder really.

Honestly, I think the writing portion of the SAT is particularly BS. I worked as a report and have written several grants and I almost failed the writing portion. It simply does not test the proper way to write.

Agreed. The writing portion is silly. I took the SAT in 9th grade because it was required for this program I was in, and I got a considerably higher score on my essay then than I did when I took the SAT for real as a senior.

ya i did only get a four out of 14 (i'm pretty sure that was the scaling for the essay and i think thats what you are talking about) but i got an pretty good score overall so it's whatever.

Alright, as a current high school student, I have a few things to say.

First, bo_sox, either you're full of shit or your school is. The official October testing date for the SAT was two weeks ago (I am certain of this because I took subject tests), and a score that isn't a multiple of 10 is impossible. You may have taken the PSAT today, as juniors at my school did, but that's a different test.

Second, the writing portion is incredibly stupid. I took the SAT once as a 9th grader and once as an 11th grader. I came in without any prep both times, and hence without any knowledge of their expectations, and I got the same essay score both times, despite being a substantially better writer the second time.

Third, the critical reading and math portions are stupid as well. The math tests at a level far below anything a junior in high school should be doing, and half of the reading test is testing vocabulary from a list of pretentious words that the all-knowing College Board has deemed important.

Fourth, the College Board is terrible. The test is designed so that one can improve his score substantially by taking an expensive prep course or buying official books. Instead of testing intelligence and your learning progress, they test how well you meet their arbitrary standards because it's a good way for them to make money.

ghug +1

My school essentially says that the PSAT and SAT are the same. Maybe they are wrong; if you haven't figured it out, I could care less They call it both on a regular basis. They also weight it on something for school records. I don't know what or why or how.

The writing doesn't say much to me about my skills as a writer, supporting much of my point.

Thanks. I don't know why the College Board thinks that specific knowledge of specific words tests how good I am at reading.

Exactly.

They're different, and you're going to have to take the real SAT or the ACT if you want to get into college.

"I don't know why the College Board thinks that specific knowledge of specific words tests how good I am at reading."

The answer to this one is simple. The more you read, the better vocabulary you have, and the more likely you are to be able to define an unfamiliar word based on context (or even its roots). Vocab is one of the hardest things to cram for, one of the hardest things to "fake" knowledge of.

Thus, they know that there exists a correlation between testing well on vocab and overall reading skills, so why not take a closer look at that in an exam?

I understand that, ghug, but the tests themselves are similar to their "real" version.

they are similar but the actual test was harder imo than the psat when i took it.

@bo There's no essay and the math's even easier, but you're right that it's similar.

@YJ, from my understanding, they take the words from a known list, so it isn't too hard to study for that part of the reading section. My mastery of the English language shouldn't be judged by the number of definitions of obscure words I've been able to memorize. When I don't know what a word means, I figure it out from context and move on, because that's how reading a language works, but they make the SAT questions specifically ambiguous so that you can't do that on the tests. It's not the best way to test us, it's the best way for them to make money, and I have a problem with that.

I would be very interested in your thoughts, Ghug, on an alternative standardized multiple choice testing method that would have a predictive value for certain important aspects of a person's intelligence (like reading).

YJ, if budget cuts continue and teacher quality keeps on getting lower, I wouldn't bother worrying about the SAT, but if it's up for debate, I would do a little research and add different sections that are aimed to different learning styles (not the stereotypical three) and more applicable skills. Better yet, kick the College Board out.

Look at the way the AP English tests are structured. Knock off the essays and you have a much better reading test than the one they put on the SATs.

They really should put some form of historical analysis and scientific analysis on the SAT too if they really want to make it useful.

I usually don't disagree with YJ on principle, but when I do, I guess I have to elaborate.

Vocab is actually one of the easier things to cram for because there is a list of words (some are published in study guides and some by ETS themselves) that are frequently used. For some reasons, ETS thinks that the particular words they have chosen are inherently more important than other words. Moreover, knowing a definition is not as critical to reading anymore due to advent of the internet. I believe reading apps can now look up words for you. Does it make easier to read more books if you know Latin and Greek or just more words? Yes it does, but it isn't a critical skill. The vast majority of factual knowledge can be searched nowadays anyway. As a footnote, I do want to mention that having certain knowledge does make acquiring related knowledge much easier because our brains can make the connections stronger and more quickly, but those knowledge are usually endemic. Physicists are able to get more out of physics articles than biologists, and neither one has an advantage compared to the other when they read field-neutral research such as anthropology or epistemology (and vice versa, even though most philosophers have a bigger lexicon than the average scientist, it doesn't mean he is more able to read better).
It's more important what you read on a regular basis and what you do with that information and whether or not you are able to communicate cogently. Take Diplomacy for example. Nobody cares that a player can use big words. In fact, most of us don't use big words and we don't care when others do. It's a matter of whether the other party can understand what we are trying to convey.
Most importantly, however, is that standardized test scores are not very good predictors of how hard working one is and how successful one will be. SAT, ACT, and GRE and whatever else have relatively low correlation with success. GPA is actually a better predictor and this is regardless of what schools they are from. There is a higher correlation because you usually cannot get very good GPA unless you care and you put in some time and effort. Probably the two best indicators for success are tenacity and emotional intelligence.

For the folks still in high school, yeah, standardized tests suck and they don't mean shit, but they are one of those stupid hoops you have to jump through, so suck it up and just get it done. They only assign meanings to you if you allow them to do so. Otherwise, it's just a number or two. What you do with your life and your free time would be more indicative of how well you'll do in life.

huh, I didn't know that about "certain words." That's stupid :)

ghug I have no idea how AP english tests are structured, having never come close to taking AP english.

Oh. Basically, they give you passages and ask a bunch of reading comprehension and analysis questions. They find passages from really pretentious philosophers from several hundred years ago that actually makes it somewhat challenging (or would, if the grading scale weren't so lenient).

They could also structure it like many of the foreign language subject tests, though I don't know exactly how those work.

I'm usually not that picky, but when I am...

I can't find the quote "certain words" anywhere, YJ.
Maybe you can come up with random ass quotes from the other thread that you participate in, but in this thread, let's quote something only when it has actually been said please. You can't copy and paste text that doesn't exist.

I'm going to ignore everything that's posted so far and just post my score:
790 Reading, 600 Math, 800 Writing.


Come at me bros.

Nice math score you got there.