opinions about the SAT

thrill3rnit3

Are you guys in favor of keeping it or abolishing it?

Sorry if this is somewhat not related to math/physics but I'm trying to get opinions from both sides for a report.

Howers

Seeing as I advocate natural intelligence I am for it. SAT is a good filter which favors either very smart people or those with good work ethic. What is the alternative? Some schools are harsher on grades than others, so one needs a standardized system.

qntty

If it continues to stick around I think that the weight that it should have in college applications should be almost none with the exception of a huge outlier (eg a 4.0 valedictorian with a 1700/2400 on the SAT) in which case that should be investigated but if it was abolished all together it wouldn't be much of a loss.

thrill3rnit3

If they get abolished altogether, how about those guys who decide to focus on school and academic related stuff, which leaves them no time for other sports/extracurricular stuff. The SAT is the only way they can distinguish themselves from others. Idk if it's just me, but I'm sick and tired of all these "well-rounded" crap.

I've asked some people, and their reason for wanting to abolish it is that some kids have the "resource - money" to get the necessary training. IMO, money can only get you so far. What about those other kids who DIDN'T pay for it, but are naturally gifted and thus would do well on the SAT. I think that's a bit unfair to them.

bleedblue1234

I think it should be kept... there is an enormous difference between a 4.0 at a poor public high school taking mediocre classes and a 4.0 taking rigorous courses at a "top" public/private high school....

In my personal experience (being in high school myself) i see a very strong correlation with grades/overall intelligence and SAT scores (with a few exceptions of course).... it seems to be a standard "benchmark" so I don't see why it shouldn't be used...

Pengwuino

I think we should keep it. There has to be something "standardized" to distinguish between the incredible diversity of quality of schools in the world. For the best of the best students, if you have national awards and tons of good extra curricular activities, your SAT isn't going to be terrible and probably not going to make you lose out on a school. If you're a level below the best of the best though you're not gonna have national awards to distinguish yourself and it all comes down to GPA otherwise. You can play the system very easily and achieve a 4.0 with no work and just join a bunch of meaningless clubs and activities. Now if you're even below that, it's nice to have some indicator of possible hidden talent (low GPA due to laziness and apathy or family obligations or whatever that prevent you from having a GPA worthy of your intelligence) that a university could take into account.

I'm very anti-system though in these arguments. I've seen people who are geniuses that had lower GPAs then people who just take the easiest classes possible and ... "know the teachers"... and join a lot of meaningless clubs and associations. The smarter, dedicated people take all AP classes and are in competitions and such and maybe 1 test or one bad teacher gives them a B and on paper, they're seemingly inferior.

I do wonder what a real college admission process looks like though. I've heard at the worst, your application gets 2 minutes of attention...

qntty

My main problem with it is that it's gamed by some kids e.g. they hire private tutors and can improve their score by several hundred points in some cases. The end result is that kids who can afford things like that are at an advantage.

thrill3rnit3

see, I have some beef with that reasoning.

I believe that money can only do so much. No matter how many $$$ you pour on a kid who isn't motivated to learn and isn't interested in getting a good score on the SAT, he's not gonna do well in it.

Also, those people who say that the SATs are only about test taking strategies, I don't know what the hell they're talking about. Eliminating 2 out of 4 of the answer choices generally won't land you a good score.

Tobias Funke

The "strategies" are all things a child could (and should) figure out, but you wouldn't believe how many kids just can't figure out that it may be a good idea to plug in the answer choices until you get a correct one. If they see something they can't do they just freeze. The strategies are actually new to them and they do help. And it is in your favor to guess if you can eliminate at least one answer choice. It won't matter much, but it helps.

Even the math portion of the test is more about reading the question correctly and picking the answer they actually asked for (for example, if x=5 sometimes they'll ask for 3x. Guess what most people circle). Most students can't crack 650 or so even with training, but it's not like a 700-800 means much, considering the test is mainly easy algebra and geometry.

The SAT is a good measure of at least some kind of intelligence, but it doesn't impress me in the least when someone says they got an 800 on a section.

j93

But it does guarantee you a better score hence an advantage,


I think it is true that it offers an advantage to the wealthy but it also provides a standard benchmark across all HS so it shouldnt go away though it should not be the be-all-end-all.

j93

Even ETS after much research has not seen such a correlation so either you or ETS is wrong. The only claim ETS has made is that it correlates(not strongly) with freshman grades

maze

You can get equivalent improvements by borrowing sat prep books from the library and working through them.

PieceOfPi

I do believe the "standard" exam should exist, and I do think the SAT show that the students with high score are gifted. But what about the students with low scores? Did they get those low scores because they are . . . well, not as gifted as the students with high scores?

I did fine on math portion of the SAT (660), but I did poor on the reading and writing sections (490 on reading, 510 on writing), partly because English is my second language. Now, I do realize that this is the "standard" test, and there shouldn't be a compensation like "Oh, well, English isn't his native tongue, so let's add +x points to his scores." And I am also not going to persuade that the SAT is "not fair" for people who don't speak English as a first language.

My main concern is that I am not certain about what college admission department thinks of students without an excellent SAT score. Despite my low scores on SAT, I had an excellent GPA with a good number of AP/Honors courses, and I even got 5 on AP calculus, and 4's on AP chemistry, biology, and even US history exams (and I believe the last one requires quite a bit of writings and readings in English). Would college admission team look at my SAT score and automatically assume that I don't have an enough qualification to be admitted to the school, or would they look at some other parts of my application document and ponder what is causing that low score?

In short, here's my question: Yes, I think a high score on SAT indicate that the student is gifted, but what about the students who don't score high? Is there a reason to it? Or does that automatically indicate that the student is not gifted?

By the way, this is no longer my big concern since this is my second year in my university (although I might be concerned about GRE in near future...).

j93

If you really believe so then you have not paid top dollar for a decent tutor or SAT program.

maze

Well, err, its not really a question of belif - what I said is what I actually did (borrow books from the library and improve my score considerably).

Theelectricchild

I am hard-pressed to agree with this statement. I enrolled in a preparation course by Princeton Review a couple months before the SAT back in high school, and the most valuable thing I got from that course was probably the 10 sample SAT exams book. The actual class was next to useless for me.

It all depends on the person and what works for him/her. To me, taking the test again and again was the best way to prepare for the real thing, and I did reasonably well (much better than what I got on the practice tests).

Tobias Funke

I worked for Kaplan for almost a year doing private SAT math tutoring. Basically, the parents pay something like $140/hr for 4 or 5 books, instruction, and 3-5 practice tests. All I did was assign homework and then the next time I'd sit next to them and we'd go through the problems together. Most of them went up about 50-100 points in each subject, but that can certainly be done for much cheaper and without a private tutor.