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Comment by NERD_ALERT | Hacker News Reader

SAT/ACT measure how good you are at following rules and how much time/money you have to go to tutors and study 1000 page textbooks outlining specific strategies to maximize your score.

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Most of the evidence I see suggests that working through a test book at your local library goes a long way towards erasing most of the disadvantage associated with going into the test cold. Yes, there's some time involved but I'm pretty sure declining returns set in fairly quickly. There are clearly advantages associated with recognizing the type of questions that will often be on the test. But a lot beyond that is actually knowing the vocabulary and the various geometry, etc. material.

Now, if you basically don't know or have trouble understanding the material? I wonder to what degree some tutoring and even a fair bit of time are going to make up for years of poor school outcomes (for whatever reason). Some specific strategies are 1.) pretty straightforward--if you can quickly narrow options down, maybe guess and move on--and 2.) won't move the needle a lot.

Really? My SAT scores were average for admit to the college I attended. I never had a tutor, never looked at test strategy guides, and took the test only once, and my parents were lower middle class. The people I know who got 800s (perfect SAT scores in those days) did not game the system - 5 minutes talking to them would reveal that they were very, very smart individuals.

Want to do well on the SATs?

1. take all the math classes your high school offers

2. pay attention in those classes

3. read a lot of adult-level books (I read tons of scifi)

and you'll do fine without needing any gamesmanship.

BTW, I'd advise caution with gaming your way into a tough college, rather than doing the work. It will assume a solid foundation in math, and you'll still have to work hard. Having to struggle, then transfer out after a year, is not doing yourself a favor.

Me, I struggled and came pretty close to flunking out.

Do you have any sources for this? SAT scores aren't highly correlated with household income, there is something but it's far from everything.

In my opinion and experience of the results my peers got, these kinds of standardized tests were really pretty good. The tests and studying methods themselves didn't necessarily mimic what you would do in a real job or even a university degree and sure seemed stupid and annoying at the time when you had to do the damned things... But stepping back and thinking about it, for the most part the people who were intelligent and capable of a motivated and disciplined approach to academics and fields that typically require degrees did actually tend to score better than people who were lacking in those things.

Yes there was the occasional very intelligent person who wasn't disciplined or motivated for whatever reason who did poorly. They weren't or wouldn't have been happy or done well in college either though, for the most part. And there were a few uninspiring intellects who got extremely high marks withe the sheer grind, although I think that's an impressive attribute itself and probably very useful for a lot of fields. There certainly were not hordes of Einsteins and Newtons just slipping through the cracks because they didn't test well.

So I don't know. There is this "common wisdom" that tests are terrible, which is an attractive idea. I just don't know if that's really true. Maybe they're actually pretty good for a large proportion of people.

Anything you can prep for - grades included - is going to trend towards being largely influenced by "who has the most time and money."

I don't have any good ideas to get away from that.

Having a more centered economic distribution amongst children is a good one. It is non-sensical and anti-meritocratic to have a large enough skew amongst child starting positions as to render meritocratic testing irrelevant.

It's possible our declining academic performance is simply another artifact of rising inequality.

Yes, let's solve the problem of skewed student assessment by solving inequality. Your solution is far less tractable than the problem!

Or is it? we generally know how to solve inequality - we don't know how to solve student assessment. Higher taxes and rising inflation/interest rates reduce inequality.

> who has the most time and money

Or what matters most - who is willing to put in the effort.

You already have 6 hours a day in high school. Don't need more time than that. As for money, that's not needed either. Your high school math books will do. There's also the public library, the Kahn Academy, youtube, etc.

Compared to grades it is certainly a magnitude less dependent on how much time/money you have, how many tutors you have, and how good you are at reading textbooks.

Tutoring and extensive exam-specific prep can boost scores. They are not necessary for getting a high score.

Which is a good predictor for succeeding in college, including college success.

So if a student who has to work 30 hours a week to support his family scores worse than a student who has no job and visits a tutor to study an SAT prep book outlining bizarre strategies about deciding when to not answer a question to score higher, that means the latter student should be preferred for college admissions?

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