Comment by Spinnaker_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spinnaker_ | Hacker News Reader

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You ever watch the NFL scouting Combine? It's a stat every recruiter looks at for most sports. As a competitive volleyball player I (and my coach) obsessed over a 5% increase that came from years of training.

The evidence that you can train for the SAT is pretty scarce.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-3984.... https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/Briggs_Theeffe... https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...

That's pretty surprising. I would have thought that everyone who does something like a test the second time does better.

Certainly I don't think I've ever not done better the second time I looked at a paper, so maybe my experience is just special.

To be incredibly reductive:

  - Some people are so disinterested in standardized tests that they never did a practice test or anything like it (this is me!)
  - These people get a pretty significant bump from taking the test a second time, from sheer familiarity effects (I didn't bother, but maybe I should have!)
  - It is unclear that extensive SAT tutoring does anything for anyone more than "force you to look at an SAT practice test at least once, and alert you to the fact that you are allowed to take the test many times, thus giving you a chance to choose the max of a naturally varying set rather than a single measurement"

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