Hacker News Reader

I did 2160 out of 2400 (1490 on the 1600 scale), which got me Merit Commended and an Achievement Scholars Candidacy. No test prep, save for basic instructions and having taken the PSAT twice. AFAIC I bombed the math portion and would have scored over 700 if I'd taken it a second time. I was a decent student, but nothing special. That was a decade ago. Currently working in a big chain retailer's warehouse for $17/hr.

Accordingly, I think the SAT is a bit of a farce. Like BMI, it's essentially worthless without context that, assessed prudently, could advise stakeholders on its own, without the test score. Likewise, it obfuscates the true nature of the strengths and weaknesses of the tested. With a 9xth percentile score, are you like me, possessing a high natural aptitude but dealing with the fallout of a mental health issues, a dysfunctional home life, and the fundamental difficulties of being black in American society? Are you a intellectually-middling child of wealthy parents who can afford to shove test prep down your throat until you "get it," and then provide for your professional needs post-college? Or are you a hard-worker who studied diligently, only to exit undergrad to find that your options are severely limited by your debt load?

This is all kind of beside the point, however. We get stuck in this quagmire of discussing how best to facilitate the sorting and tracking of our youth into will succeed/won't succeed boxes, when we should be working to assure success across the board. Why are some American colleges (entrance into which is the aim of taking the SAT in the first place) excellent, and others not? Why the acceptance of such disparities in educational quality?

>Why are some American colleges (entrance into which is the aim of taking the SAT in the first place) excellent, and others not? Why the acceptance of such disparities in educational quality?

Some people, such as Bryan Caplan, believe that college is mostly about signaling.[0] The idea is that most of the value college provides for individual students is to indicate to society that the student can jump through all the hoops necessary. It's much less about what the student actually learns in college. Essentially, college is mostly about being a filter - to weed out those that can't make it. This line of thinking would also explain college acceptance tests - they are the same type of filter, but applied before college. It's there to keep the college prestigious, so that more people will try getting into it, which will allow them to only pick the best of the best.

I think there's a lot of merit to the signaling idea, because a lot of what you learn in college doesn't have much practical value for the vast majority of students. College entrance tests are just one part of this whole process.

[0] https://blog.press.princeton.edu/2018/01/23/bryan-caplan-on-...

The Harvard Extension School is a good example of this. The school wants to make money by offering classes to more students, but doesn't want people to call them "Harvard students" because it would diminish the exclusivity in their branding (the same exclusivity that attracts people to the extension school).

I majored in EE, and can say it was only the non-STEM courses that were worthless. There is no way I’d gain the same amount of knowledge without attending college.

Sure, but a large number of majors consist of non-STEM courses. I don't think that non-STEM courses don't teach you useful things either, but I think that most people don't have a use for what those courses teach. (Some people do have use for those skills though.)

It definitively is about signalling but that doesn't mean you don't learn anything in college.

Of course you learn things in college. The point is that what we're doing as a society with college is inefficient. We require a certificate from job-seekers that says that they've gone through college. But college teaches a lot of people a lot of skills and knowledge that will not be useful for a large portion of the students. Essentially, our society requires a prospective employee to demonstrate capability in things that are not necessary for their job or even rest of their life.

Hi. This was very nicely written. I certainly understand that thinking regarding the big picture.

However, IMO, the SAT adds another variable for contextualization of these inequalities in the American education system, regardless of if the SAT itself is unequal.

Structural inequality in higher education is a whole different ballgame, and is much more complex. As someone who went to a public college, and then got to see what life was like at Ye Olde Ivy colleges and schools like Stanford/Berkeley, it's pretty apparent that there were some structural decisions from the top down that facilitated that success outside of even the economic differential between schools/programs.

Very tough things worth thinking about. I don't think that people treat standardized testing as some all telling oracle, and if they do, I believe that they're mistaken. I remember that our school offered something called the PLAN? which was like the PSAT for the ACT. The career advice it gave me based on my results was that I'd be good at landscape work.

I've never defined myself by my test taking capabilities but I will admit I always felt a little affronted upon reading everything from the movements that seek to de-legitimize all standardized testing. I felt that something I specifically chose to gamify and study for was being increasingly seen as a negative signal.

Life is tough man. I hope people succeed regardless of if they even go to college or not. With that in mind, I also hope that perhaps there can be a cultural shift that facilitates scoring better on aptitude testing because perhaps that may be a signal about our society, even if that is not a perfect signal.

If every college is excellent, none of them are.

I get that we should be raising standards across the board whenever possible. Education is extremely valuable and I'd like more people to be more educated. But there is always going to be a continuum of prestige, educational value, intelligence of students, etc. among various colleges.

Success and life satisfaction (shouldn't be) zero sum.

Probably not. But there is always going to be a spectrum of variously qualified college students, and they are going to sort into a hierarchy of colleges. That will be true even if every college graduate has a life that would be considered "successful." Of course, success and satisfaction tend to be moving scales as well, and are often judged against peers. That's not about being zero sum. More education probably grows the pie. But only a limited number of people can go to the best colleges, unless you lower standards such that they are all mediocre.

I agree, but rankings are by their very nature zero sum.

If one person goes up, another goes down unless they are exactly equal. That level of equality is something I think impossible to achieve and even if we did, humans would find some other way to rank people.

But compared to the past, we can make it better. There is no reason why the 50th percentile today cannot be equal to the 60th percentile of yesteryear.

I only did alright on the SAT, but I smoked the GRE by doing something similar.

The Kaplan book had a CD with a few practice tests. I think I did 2. If for no other reason, they are super useful for figuring out how to pace yourself.

The math section was (is?) easy for most people on this site. This seems the norm because the score/percentile relationship was incredibly high.

The English section kills people. My pro-tip is, in the same Kaplan book, they have a list of the most common words. I made flashcards for the top 100, and I'll be damned if like 80 of them didn't show up on the test. I imagine this is similar for the SATs.

In grad school, we took an unofficial survey of GRE verbal and quant scores. Far and away, the non English speaking students scored significantly higher than natives. Anecdotally, The non native speakers actually studied in that way you describe, and the native speakers assumed the fluency would carry its weight instead

Hi. Thanks for sharing this. I suspect that would be true for foreign students within programs across the board in the US, because you tend to learn as an outsider through an application of “rigor” and more raw memorization than higher order types of learning. I’m speaking this from experience as a foreigner who moved to the US early on. I’ve always doubted many higher order learning methods precisely because they didn’t ever distill the discipline to work better...

Weirdly, I scored completely average on the math for the GMAT despite an engineering and math degree and pretty much aced the verbal without any studying (figured out early on I needed to focus on studying quant, which I hated the test). But, I probably had a heavier English background than most people taking the test as I worked for newspapers and did a lot of personal writing for many years. Guess it's all about how you line up against the field in some cases.

This was my experience. I had an almost perfect score on the math section of the GRE, but that only landed me in the mid 80s percentile wise. On the other hand, my English score was quite a ways from perfect, but I was surprised to see that it was 98th percentile.

It definitely sucks that you can not miss a single question yet still end up with something like a 98th percentile because of the question set you happened to get.

Hi. Thank you for sharing your experience. I am about to take a GRE myself so this type of insight is very helpful. I too remember making a lot of flashcards for the SAT. I had a rather relaxed approach to studying but the consistency over time made it seem like everything I learned showed up one way or another on the test, especially vocal words.

As I'm sure you know (but maybe others don't), the main difference is that the GRE adapts to how you're doing, asking harder / easier questions when you get them right / wrong. This means the early questions have outweighed importance in your overall score and hence pacing yourself is very important. (I am very glad I did a few practice tests)

You want to leave yourself time for (hopefully) hard questions at the end, but a silly mistake early on hurts, so it pays to take your time in the first few minutes as well.

Fortunately it should be obvious how you are doing after the first group of questions, if they go from roll-your-eyes easy to ones that make you pause a moment. :)

You seem to think the amount of prep you did was minimal. I'd wager it's more than most students do. It's certainly well in excess of anything I did to prepare and while my score was lower, it was more than enough (along with grades, activities, etc) to get me into my state's top public university.

The test prep centers do basically what you did - they just cost more and hold the student accountable (in as much as the student spends time at the center and presumably works through the test exercises).

I'm 100% convinced there is no "secret" to test taking, however there are a hundred "tactics" and they apply variably to each person.

I was asked to take the SAT when I was 12 as part of the Johns Hopkins Gifted Talent Search (although back then I seem to recall it just being the Talent Search), this was back in 1990. I got a 790 on the verbal and 590 on math. When I took it "for real" in high school, I got an 800 on verbal and 690 on the math. I took one PSAT that I was required to take by the school, I never read any books, I never did practive tets at home, etc. I've ALWAYS been a "good test taker" in that they don't intimidate me at all, no nerves, etc. For me there's no trick to doing well on a test other than knowing the material.

I have friends who are very, VERY smart, and terrible test takers. My wife is very smart, and while she's good on tests, she needs to prep a fair amount to feel ready. Other people get nervous, or freeze, etc.

It's all about how a person deal with the situation of a test, and you have to come up with a psychological plan for that. Aside from that, you either know the information or you don't.

I did the same for JHU, and got good enough scores to get into their program. They wouldn’t let me in because I missed the age cutoff by 1 month. Screw JHU.

Seems like that rule should have been applied BEFORE you took the test, so as not to taunt you.

I think it was the issue of taking the SAT at 12, but turning 13 before the program. I don’t recall, it was almost 40 years ago. I just know my mother was pissed.

Heh, mine was 30 years ago, I hear ya!

Got an 1540/1600 on the SAT and a full score on the PSAT. I’m now in college on a National Merit Scholarship because of my PSAT score.

Today, it’s even easier to study for the SAT. Khan Academy offers free, official prep to every single student and 8 official practice exams to take. I also used free practice tests made by other companies to study, too. The only purchase I made for SAT prep was a $20 book from Kaplan that had 1000 practice questions and helpful (guessing) strategies.

The test nowadays seems to be a socioeconomic equalizer-those who can’t afford a book or a computer can always go to the public library and get the same resources. The only real reason anyone would pay for test prep classes is because it forces you to practice at regular intervals. Test prep classes also help students revise material that they may have been rusty on, which again you could do online nowadays. That’s why things like the Collegeboard adversity score seem absurd to me. Anyone, really, can afford to do well on the SAT.

Now, of course, the actual educational value of the test is another question altogether.

>I never took any prep course. I always was of the mindset that the only value they provided was forced practice. I never bought that they taught secrets of test taking.

...

>Secondly I bought a Kaplan book which just had 12 tests in it for $20.

Did the Kaplan book not have "secrets" of test taking? Mine did, and one of them was actually useful:

When you have an "analogy" question, where they give you an A:B, and then ask which of the five choices have the same analogy.

What do you do if you don't know the meaning of both A and B?

Well, of the five choices, you will find two that are identical as far as analogies go. As an example, if you have two choices:

cat:kitten

dog:puppy

You know neither of these two can be the answer because there would be no reason to pick one over the other.

Then you'll have another choice with absolutely no relationship (e.g. pen:donkey). You can eliminate that immediately. So now you're down to two choices. Pick one randomly.

But yeah - overall I didn't learn any other big secrets - other than the obvious one of working backwards from the answers for many quantitative problems (don't solve an equation for x - just start plugging them in!).

Hi. I think that the quotations around the secrets is totally warranted. I was trying to state that I always thought that the "secrets" that many test prep courses tried to sell to parents/students were just question design, and not actually some behind the scenes insight.

Do you really disagree with that? That's what a lot of the marketing seems to be focused on. I felt like question exposure alone got me those same insights, and in fact, the official SAT book rather explicitly lists those things out.

Most people don't read the annoying small text that accompanies the books that spells out a lot of those strategies. Instead they'd rather pay someone a lot of money to tell that to them :)

I myself did not take any SAT prep courses, so I can't disagree. My point was that some small tricks do exist, and most test takers are not aware of them. Knowing those tricks will give you a slight advantage.

For me, those prep courses would likely be a poor value. However, I likely am not in the demographic who would benefit most from them. There are plenty of people out there who haven't learned how to learn from a book, and so having someone teach them will result in better scores. I would have thought such people will likely struggle in college, yet my grad school had quite a few of them. I guess they found a way to compensate.

The trick I mentioned was not in the official SAT book.

I didn't do any prep for the SAT or ACT. Later I considered taking the GRE and read a prep book that had tips like above. I was astounded how much easier it made the verbal questions.

My story matches yours almost exactly. Didn't take a class, did a bunch of practice tests, got an almost perfect score.

I agree that confidence is very important, and aptitude matters too (otherwise everyone who took a class would get a 2400).

Commonly-given wrong advice is about guessing. You should never leave a question blank. Prior to 2016, guessing had an EV of 0, so if you had any hint that any of the answers are better or worse than chance, you should guess. I heard advice like "only guess if you can eliminate two answers", which is clearly wrong.

Now they got rid of the penalty for wrong answers, so guessing has positive EV even if you have no information at all.

I believe that the EV just changed recently though right? Because when I took the SAT, there was an incorrect answer penalty that now doesn't exist.

I ninja-edited my post. Previously the EV for uniform guessing was zero, because the points value for all the answers (1, -.25, -.25, -.25, -.25) summed to 0. Now the EV is positive because they got rid of the -.25 penalty.

To make things more complicated: if you were gunning for a high score in the old system, it was even more important to guess, because your partial points could get rounded up.

Thank you for the comment. Do you have any idea which question you missed?

Hi. Yes. The only section I did not get a perfect on was writing. I missed 1 of the multiple choice questions. I always believed that the grammar choices offered were a bit dubious but it is what it is. Totally possible and probably likely that I just got some grammar rule wrong, though I’d like to think that the test was wrong :)

Am I misremembering how the test is scored? My recollection was that score == writing score + math score + verbal score, with each section being worth 800. If you only missed a question on the writing, shouldn't your score have been at least 2300, and your 1600 scale score would have been 1600?

I believe so. The curve on the test, if that is the right word here, is a bit random. Sometimes one could miss 2 or 3 questions and still have an 800. My Math and Verbal Scores were 800 each. The one question I missed in Writing gave me a 790 out of 800, but in reality it was 590 out of the 600 allocated towards the multiple choice questions, with the "optional" writing section weighing in for the other 200 points. This is a gross oversimplification and could be totally wrong but that was what my score was.

Yes, I understand that, but that still doesn't seem to add up right to me. You seem to have gotten a perfect score on the optional writing section, so let's just ignore that since it would only increase your overall score. Your score was 800+800+590 out of 800+800+800, which is 2190/2200. Just applying the same ratio to 1600 gets 1592 on the 1600 scale. If I adjust for the fact that the 1600 scale is really "the same math test and writing+verbal combined into one score), I get 800 + (1390/1400)*800 = 1594. Right?

I know this isn't important, I'm just trying to understand where my math is breaking down.

I don't think that everything scales 1:1.

I took this from the College Board website:

"Your raw score is converted to a scaled score of 200 to 800 points, the score you see on your score report. We use a process that adjusts for slight differences in difficulty between various versions of the test (such as versions taken on different days).

We do this to make sure there’s no advantage in taking the test on a particular day. A score of 400, for instance, on one day’s test means the same thing as a 400 on a test taken on a different day—even though the questions are different."

https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/scores/how-sat...

I definitely remember that it's scored, it's just really hard for me to imagine getting a single question wrong and having your overall score go down by over 100 points (almost 7%).