I rock standardized tests, personally. (nope, no false modesty here... my PSATs, SATs, and GRE's were all pretty much stratospheric and I certainly didn't spend much time on prep, and took them once each)
I play it like a game, though, and don't worry about "truth" in the conventional sense. I've
always just looked for the best answer and not gotten hung up on the right one.
It's like playing Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit or something-- it's not a
test-- it's a GAME.
I had more fun with the old GRE analytical section than any other single afternoon in my life. VERY sad to see that go. I used to buy GRE prep books just for the (generally lightly used) section with all of those fun logic puzzles in it.
DD on the other hand tends to do BEST when she is moving at warp speed. She took her PSAT in about an hour and forty minutes and scored 99th percentile.
Similarly with the SAT practices she's done so far. Generally she can run through the entire thing in about 2h. The grammar section (the ten minute one?) takes her about 90 seconds flat (for a perfect 14/14 every time).
The problem is that she makes calculation errors on the
math sections when she is moving that fast, so we have to work with her on that. It's a matter of "tuning" things to optimize her scores. If she slows down for the improvement in math, her critical reading scores are likely to drop slightly. Same thing as on the PSAT.
