Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The SAT

I think the answer depends on the LOG of the kid as well as what the kids have been exposed. Generally, talent search will give SAT/ACT starting at 7th grade but some PG/EG kids have taken it in 6th grade or earlier. Also, if the kid wants to qualify for THINK summer institute, he/she must take it before 16 and before turning 13 to apply John Hopkins CTY-SET.

Another reason for taking before 9th grade is that, those scores may not carry over to college admission.

Well, in my own experience with my DD, the best outcome is when they take them YOUNG enough that their cognition is roughly within the same window as the target demographic.

What I mean by that is that a PG 17yo is not going to be reading SAT questions the way that a NT 17yo will.

But a 10yo PG child might have a better chance at reading such questions "as intended" without much problem.

The fact is that it gets a lot worse before it gets better, and the ultimate determinant is how well the person can engage in 'perspective taking' while answering questions. Meta-cognition of a very particular flavor, in other words.

My DD is pretty good at perspective-taking, but it's a pretty error-prone process when trying to evaluate individual multiple-choice questions. I think she'd have probably done better on the SAT/ACT when she was 9-11yo.

She's moving past that target window now, though-- and unless she exercises the discipline to rein her brain in and fixate on that metacognitive state-of-mind about it, she tends to struggle.

We've worked with her for a lot of years on that kind of perspective-taking because her grades in school are so heavily weighted in that same direction, by the way. I expect that she is probably better than most gifties at playing NT on assessments, but being EG/PG makes it very difficult, and harder the older she gets.

As an off-topic aside, how wacky is it that my 13yo spends MOST of her energy on the PSAT/SAT thinking "how would a typical person be expected to respond here? what SHOULD one have understood regarding this question?" and not on just which answer is "right" or "best" in an objective sense?

Seriously, people ought to get BONUS scoring with FSIQ's above some benchmark. Well, okay-- clearly that is tongue in cheek. But above some sweet spot, these tests ARE harder for bright test-takers. It's the only reason why my DD did not earn "perfect" scores, which on any given day, she was (and is) more than capable of, even under timed conditions.

It doesn't matter if you take the SAT or ACT through a talent search or just on your own - you sign up for the test the same way. My understanding is that the ACT scores remain on your account regardless of when you took the exam. There are discussions on this on College Confidential. Some colleges request you send all scores when you apply. I think that they really don't want your 7th grade ACT score, and since ACT scores are sent individually by test date, I don't think the college would even know that you took them in middle school but didn't send them.

As for prepping for the CR section, I would recommend looking at Erica Meltzer's thecriticalreader.com There are some helpful blog posts there. She also has written a book on the Critical Reading section where she discusses the nuances of the passage based questions.

While I always found the verbal section to have some fuzzy questions/answers, I can now see that there is a way to approach the questions (after reading some of the blog posts). With all due respect, I really don't think that the questions are somehow geared toward NT folks. I think it is a matter of paying attention to the precise wording of the question. That and some kids just seem to understand how the test writers think.

We don't do SAT type things here but with all multichoice I think it is important to; work out the answer (or estimate) before you look at the options, and not overthink the questions.

Tortuga - well-written and informative post! It is always helpful to get input from someone who has actually worked with many kids over a span of years. Your comments align with what I intuitively believe as well as what I have heard from a couple of SAT professionals a two decades ago when I was considering teaching SAT/LSAT courses.

My only disagreement is with your last statement that once you "go above 700 in a subject area, scoring higher really makes no difference." All other things being equal, I think that a 2400 (800 x 3) or even a 2250 (750 x 3) might garner an applicant a better chance than an applicant with a 2100 (700 x 3) of gaining admission to an elite college.

What I have heard is that CR (critical reading) requires skills honed over a number of years so that it is difficult to effect a large incresase over a few months' time unless the test taker were making basic errors. As for the math, there are some tricky questions in addition to the basic ones and successful avoidance of common/careless errors plus the ability to complete the sections quickly distinguish the highest scorers.

Yes, as MIT admissions statistics confirm http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats . The increase in the admissions rate going from the 700-740 range to the 750-800 range is larger than the increase going from 650-690 to 700-740.

Two of my four took it in 6th grade, and another might take it in 6th this year. They both said that they had no problems finishing it, but they skipped some math problems on which they had no clue. Neither found it frustrating and both did pretty well (one about average for seniors and the other at NUMATS-awards level- perhaps closer to 85 or 90th%-ile). However, neither one took the writing (both were through school gifted programs that didn't offer the writing). I can imagine that that would have been hard for both of them, since they are both more math-science than writing. My writer chose not to take it in 6th (because she was intimidated by the math) but she rocked it and the ACT in HS the first time she took them, so I don't think that one HAS to take them. And I completely agree with the poster who said that the reading is hardest to improve. For my writer, she got a 35 or 36 in the Reading/English and an 800 in CR first time out, and she was able to pull up her math pretty easily through self study by taking the ACT again. She just got a study guide, reviewed which sections she needed to improve, and busted her butt for a few weeks (nothing crazy). I think she improved about 5 points in math. She said her mathy friends tried everything to improve their reading scores and most failed.

Thanks for the link. Hard data is always compelling. I was going partly by gut and partly by my own classmates from way back and partly by recent anedoctal data. It's amazing that 800 is the 75 percentile for Math and 790 is the 75 percentile for Reading among MIT admittees.

For me, your advice about working out the answer before you look at the options would be a great waste of time. A quick overview of the answers can sometimes reveal that all but one option can be eliminated for various reasons. In the case that the answers are all similar and reasonable, knowing the answer range in advance can help correct careless errors more quickly if those answers would lead to a result outside that range.

On the other hand, I understand that everyone approaches tests differently, and people have to use what works for them. Some people certainly do better by simply working the problem and seeing which of the options matches their result. I have inferred from your post that you assume everyone is that way though, which isn't true.