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ToxicSlurpee posted:To be fair the other side of that was the fact that the SAT turned out to not be culture-neutral. It also had (well, still has) issues that arise from the quality of education one received. When I took it there were mathematical symbols on it I just plain didn't recognize at the time because I was never taught them. Yeah, that's not exactly cultural bias.
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Sep 28, 2015 08:48
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Main Paineframe posted:Thanks for all this info! It's rare to get a glimpse into how this stuff works behind the scenes like that. What 'behind the scenes' information is there here? He also seems to have this weird misconception that his ability to game the test is somehow unique to him among high scorers. Basically all high scorers do this at some level, especially on the verbal section. And goddamn his stream-of-consciousness posting is insufferable. tehllama posted:I dunno, as someone who has always done extremely well on standardized tests the ability to see the question behind the question is definitely a huge part of it. Whether that's a reflection of better knowledge/ability with regards to actual content of the test, I personally don't really think so. I definitely know some very smart people who even at the graduate level just suck at certain types of questions and I have to think its because they read the question in a very different way, or fail to immediately see the examiners intent behind the question. I would actually argue that being able to correctly answer questions where you lack key pieces of knowledge is a greater sign of intelligence than merely a check on whether you know something or not. One is pattern matching, the other is just a knowledge check. Of course both knowledge and pattern matching are trainable skills to some extent but the latter maps more closely to what is considered 'intelligence' than the former. Lotka Volterra posted:That'd be great if that's what they actually did. The SAT I math section definitely provides a pretty good signal as to whether someone cannot do basic math.
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Sep 28, 2015 21:47
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Shakugan posted:One thing some of you might find interesting is the way that standardized testing is approached in other countries. The way the US does it is actually particularly bad, since the SATs don't have much relation to coursework material that students are learning throughout their last few years of high school, and it is the test itself that is of such extreme importance. The US has a huge population divided across states with a substantial degree of educational autonomy, and gigantic variance in school quality at both the secondary and postsecondary level. It's a lot easier to do things in Australia (or Canada) where almost all decent universities are public and most would rank somewhere in the 70-90th percentile of universities in the US. Even in Canada, nation-wide comprehensive examinations aren't in place (even provincial-level testing is largely disappearing) and the net effect is favorable to students at top public or private schools which can freely grade inflate (i.e. it's a long ways from being a reliable estimate of 'drive and ability', and in particular the curriculum is too simple to differentiate between top students, which is why AP/IB courses have also become popular here).
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Sep 29, 2015 04:48
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Stanos posted:And as most people can attest, just being smart and/or doing well on the SAT/ACT is a terrible metric for whether you'll succeed in college. I got a 28 on my ACT iirc (and according to google that's like an 1890 on the SAT? I dunno, I took my testing before the SAT added the writing part plus I seem to remember my SAT score being kinda bad) and massively hosed up in college due to general immaturity and never learning proper study habits in high school. Without really wanting to be a dick, that's hardly an exceptional score. It's well below the 25th percentile of admitted students to top universities, and approximately the average for most flagship state schools.
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Sep 30, 2015 07:22
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Xandu posted:This isn't the right thread for this, but there is absolutely no reason your son has to be studying calculus or taking the SAT as a freshman, unless you think he's a genius who is smart enough to just skip high school altogether. Maybe have him take the PSAT during his sophomore year, but otherwise, I promise you, the best solution is calm down a bit. The kind of colleges that will give him a full ride are going to care far more about how well-rounded and interesting he is than if he bombed the SAT as a freshman (which they will probably see). IMO he is best off making sure that he's not bad at anything (so that he has an excellent GPA) and then becoming very good at something. logosanatic posted:I will not be able to afford to pay for my sons college. I would like to help him achieve as close to a full ride through college as possible. Neither my wife nor I finished college so he will be first in our family which should help. Hes white so no help there. He just started his freshman year in high school so we have time to squeeze in some recomended things. He should figure out what he really likes and become very good at it, and make sure that he's not bad enough at anything (english, foreign language courses, whatever) that it seriously hurts his GPA. Make sure that he has excellent standardized test scores and just enough leadership/athletic/whatever extracurriculars that he superficially looks 'well-rounded' (unless he's genuinely really enthusiastic about one of those, in which case he should go deeper there). Math? Get into competitive math and start taking advanced math courses (artofproblemsolving.com is a good start there) Science? Start looking into the big science competitions and the like, look into getting some sort of internship at a local college if possible. Computer science? Start doing a lot of intro courses/tutorials at Coursera/Codeacademy/whatever. Competitive programming (USACO and the like) is also a good idea. Where you are/where you want him to go is also relevant here. The above is generic good advice for getting into a top school. But if you have a specific local/state/whatever school in mind they may have some sort of full-ride program with specific criteria and you should optimize around those.
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Oct 2, 2015 20:51
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