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Can you explain what you mean by "knowing how to take the test"?

I ask because I got a very respectable SAT score and only took one practice test. All my other studying was just working problems of the type which are on the test. I found the only skill required was knowing how to solve the problems asked.

I have heard this said many times, that standardized tests are just testing your skill at taking tests. But it does not match with my perception of my experience. I am willing to be shown otherwise, which is why I ask.

Otherwise story: some preparation boosted my score 200+. And I dare to say I am not alone.

Try something like the GMAT.

By this I mean being familiar with the types of problems the SAT asks, and being aware of gotchas / features of these problems. Familiarity with the test makes it easier to take the test effectively to save time for the few genuinely challenging questions in each section.

The material on the SAT is super easy. It's about knowing how to read and analyze simple text and being able to do basic high school math. Despite this, kids taking advanced (or college-level) courses in math and the humanities don't do terribly well on the SAT on the first try. SAT prep is about mastering the esoteric parts of the SAT, not its basic subject-matter.

EDIT: I was taking college-level courses before the SAT, and I got a 1700-1900 on the first few tries. After a summer taking a dozen tests, I got to a 2280. The only new genuine "knowledge" I picked up was the meaning of some arcane words. The rest was familiarity.

Maybe it's just been too long, but I don't remember any gotchas. Do you have any examples?

Obviously you want to know what types of problems will be included, but familiarizing yourself with the types of problems seems so basic that it would hardly take multiple practice tests.

Again, it's been a long time since I've taken the SAT, and I only took it once, so I'll be the first to admit I could be wrong. I'm just trying to understand a comment I've heard many times and never understood.

Multiple choice answers often follow a pattern, after all they are trying to get you to pick the wrong answer when you make a mistake along the way. This causes the answers to group around the right answer. Test makers understand this and try and avoid telegraphing like that, but there is still some level of it going on.

In high school my calculus teacher was part of an experiment where they gave teachers the SAT. They gave the teachers the regular version of the SAT as a baseline and then gave the teachers a special version that contained only the answers choices in the multiple choice without the questions. Teachers essentially had to use their intuition about the types of answers the SAT looks for to take the test. The teachers each scored in the same approximate percentile as when they all received both the questions and answers. That is to say, the teachers that knew how to analyze the test itself (not the questions) scored better than those who didn't.

Am I reading you right? Are you saying teachers scored the same whether they were able to read the questions before answering or not? If so, do you have a link to this study? I feel like this is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence.

I think the claim was the same relative to other people under the same conditions, rather than the same relative to invariants like getting all questions correct. That's certainly much more believable.

Yes, correct. They scored in the same percentile, not the same nominal score.

Nailed it. At least in my day, tactics were the most important factor in standardized test (SAT, GRE) scores. You could draw some tables to solve the logic puzzles, and skim the "reading comprehension" BS looking for keywords based on the questions. The only thing that took serious cramming was vocabulary.

That said, SAT prep is a great way to separate rich, anxious parents from their money, given that in NY (where else...) tutoring companies charge up to $800/hr.

For example, experienced standardized test takers know how to identify correct answers without even reading the questions: http://satninja.com/sat-critical-reading/how-to-answer-sat-c.... These kinds of advantages become apparent the more you take the test. Sure, it's possible to do well by simply by knowing the concepts tested, but you can also gain a huge advantages with just exposure and experience taking practice tests.

I think I understand better now the claim being made.

It isn't so much that someone who knows the material won't do well unless they know the test, it's that someone who knows the material less well can do better simply by learning some tricks.

That, and competitive admissions mean that you can get outsized returns by investing in a bit of high-grade test prep. A 90th percentile student who takes test prep might wind up getting the same score (and the same Ivy League appeal!) as a 98th percentile student who didn't.

> Getting a high score is about knowing how to take the test, and this is learned by taking it many times.

This is silly. One way to learn to get a high score is to take the damn thing many times and waste hundreds of hours. The other way is to have a rich life full of deep conversations, lots of reading and writing, play with various sorts of puzzles and games, schoolwork taken seriously, real extracurricular projects, etc.

About half of the people I know who got above 1500 on the SAT, including a few who aced it, never studied for it explicitly, beyond a couple of practice tests given directly by their public high schools.

Though it is unpopular to say it, individuals differ in their innate academic aptitude. What is hard for some will be easy for others, and no amount of preparation can completely overcome this.

Agree

I took the SAT 4-ish years ago (junior year HS), and this is just wishful thinking.

I mean, all you've said is what is pretty self-evidently true, almost tautological: Be smart and you'll do well on the test. Well, obviously. If you were a genius you would not need to study very much at all for most things, SAT or not.

The point is that the best way to practice for the SAT, assuming you need practice is to take many tests.

Within the range of very high scores (I'm assuming you mean 1500+ excluding the W section) there is so little differentiation between candidates that anything outside of a perfect score is unworthy of comment. I would wager that the majority of students scoring in the 95th+ percentile are not who the College Board is targeting with this reworking of the exam. The difference between a 2200 and 2400 is insignificant on an application also sporting four years of perfect grades (or the stereotypical entrepreneur's report card of F's and A's) and voluntourism in sub-Saharan African.

What they seem to be aiming at is limiting the benefit of tutoring in the middle of the bell curve. The SAT is not a difficult test – there is no vocabulary in the CR section foreign to the average middle-brow New Yorker reader and the Maths section is as near a verbatim review of Massachusetts' 8th Grade Algebra I curriculum as you can find. Lazy but capable students who have otherwise been well-educated are enjoying the greatest boon from test practice, and this seems aimed at creating a more level playing field for those who are unable to afford such specialised tutoring.

Whether it will have much effect is anyone's guess...for those most affected by the inequity of US public schooling, I doubt a few months practising process of elimination and test taking strategies is going to rectify years of substandard tuition

You've expressed my point of view better than I ever could have. I tried to make it clear that this program will not change much for those who are 2+ standard deviations to the right of average. For the majority, this is a great deal.

Nicely put. I can't imagine this making a statistically discernible difference. There's already a surprising amount of free test material available online, not to mention how much is contained in just a $20 test prep book.

The College Board is releasing previously-unreleased SAT questions on Khan Academy, with answers and explanations [1]. The College Board announcement emphasized the importance of practice, as well as transparency about preparation materials such as practice tests.

While we don't have an ideal test-like practice environment yet, I hope that we will be able to provide one in the future.

[1]: https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/sat

I should have emphasized that full-length tests is what I think is valuable here.

College Board has been offering daily SAT questions by email for awhile now (and there's no lack of individual test questions online either), but what's useful is a full test, with questions of varying difficulty and a time limit enforced. Taking it on paper is important too; your score when you take the test in front a screen versus when you have paper, pencil, and a calculator won't be the same. There needs to be dozens of these tests -- I found myself getting better each time, but re-taking tests isn't helpful because I simply remembered my mistakes rather than improving my capacity to anticipate mistakes.

This is not at all to downplay the amazing work Khan Academy has been doing! I think this will be a big deal for a majority of high schoolers.

Thanks! Yes, I agree that full-length tests are important. We're not there yet, but I think we'll improve on that with time (there has been some talk of different styles of how/which/how many questions appear in an exercise for other reasons, and I think this just gives another reason to focus on that in the future).

Standardized tests don't seem to test intelligence as much a person's ability to know how to "beat the test" and to do the work to do so.