Hi, haven't visited here for a while as now living in the UK. Anyway, on another message board that is based in Britain, posts are suggesting - politicians too, that the US SAT is something that students can't practice to improve their scores. Apparently British universities are moving towards this type of test. I wasn't sure what to think. I grew up in England so have no personal knowledge, but distinctly remember seeing shelves full of SAT prep books in the bookstores. Would appreciate feedback. Thanks

The SAT started as something close to an IQ test. If you have the time, this website has an interesting history of the SAT:

http://www.erikthered.com/tutor/sat-act-history.html

Over the years it has evolved into more of an achievement test. The College Board is supposed to change the SAT again in a year or so to make it even more achievement-like.

You can prep and you can raise your score, even if the College Board says you cannot. However, for most kids, there are limits to how much they can raise their score. If you start out at a 1500 (out of 2400), maybe you can raise the score to 1700. If you begin at 2000, it is reasonable that you could prep and score a 2200. It would be very rare for a kid to make a leap of 500 or 600 points. While many folks on this forum may say that the SAT has a low ceiling or it is easy to score above 2000, decades of testing doesn't seem to show this. If it was easy to prep and raise your score a lot, kids would do this and the test would be renormed (of course it has been renormed - the other direction due to dropping test scores).

If you have a good solid background in math and have read plenty of literature and publications like the New York Times and the Economist, you will do well on the SAT. Of course, many kids in the US don't have great math instruction and they haven't read literature or publications with rich vocabulary, so they struggle with the SAT.

I respectfully disagree. The timed aspect of the SAT (and ACT) make this statement somewhat superficial.

MANY kids do NOT do as well as they should because of the timed aspect of the test. It's not that they are "slow" even-- just that they simply do not have time to reason through test items-- period.

DD did MUCH better (like, a standard deviation better) on the ACT's math section than on the SAT's. Why? Well, it's complicated, but she was able to use her super-human reading speed to generate additional time for herself, and she used that time to use reasoning and to work through problems twice. She did the math section TWICE on the ACT, basically, during that hour. Even though the problems on the ACT included trigonometry which she's technically not yet completed and never had instruction in, she did fine because she had the reasoning time to spare.

On the SAT, being broken into two sections and being much more about particular single-method problems, she simply didn't have enough time to spare, and it shows. Give her double time and she can get a perfect 800 on any given day. Easier problems than the ACT, but she doesn't do as well on them.

She has no disability that accounts for this-- it's just that under pressure she is far more prone to careless/dumb calculation-based errors. Forgetting signs, slipping a decimal place, etc. Those are far more painful on the SAT because of the test design.

Anyway-- I do think that some aspects of test prep probably work over the long haul. Hey-- we did it. But not "prep" so much as desensitization to that timed/formatting that was problematic for my DD in particular. She took about seven practice tests in the 10 weeks before the ACT.


I also think that some aspects of prep don't really work well, and that this explains nicely why the average point gain is rather pitiful when you look at what kind of difference test prep makes.


I think that the single most interesting angle on this type of testing is the ACT's science section-- which seems to measure mostly reading speed and cognitive ability.

Ironically, though, my DD's scores indicate to me that the tests skew wildly toward a mechanical rather than actual/fluent level of "literacy" particularly in written fluency, and that the math favors raw calculation speed above everything else. So my DD's actual ability and potential is, I think, misrepresented significantly by such a test. She is no writer-- and she sees seven different and all valid means of working many math problems. Yet her scores indicate the reverse should be the case.

DS11 is a deep, deep, thinker and he is always hurt by timed tests. He will not be rushed.

I also respectfully disagree, and not only due to the timed aspect which HK mentions. I think that there is a degree to which ability plays into what a student is able to pull out and synthesize information when reading publications such as the NYT etc that will enable a HG+ student to be leaps and bounds ahead of a typically "average" ability student even if they both sit down and read the same NYT articles every day of secondary school.

I can't speak directly to the SAT at this point as my children haven't taken it yet, but I can see a world of difference in verbal achievement and verbal reasoning ability test scores between my EG ds and my MG dd - both of whom are avid readers and both of whom read equally challenging articles and books (for the most part - it's of course a very not-well-constrained comparison lol!)


We see this with my ds too - in real life it's clear that his greatest abilities are in mathematics/engineering/science but if you only knew him through his standardized testing scores he would look like a very different student!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Also:


For the members on this forum, most of whom have children above the 99th percentile, this IS mostly a true statement.

It's entirely expected that HG+ children who have been educated at least reasonably appropriately SHOULD be able to score at the 99th percentile on a nationally normed assessment aimed at their age-mates. N'est pas?

MOST of our cohort here should be able to do that even 2 or more years beyond their age cohort.

I agree, especially on the math section.

Though I'll add that on the verbal section, being HG+ may be a handicap, because HG+ people tend to see nuances where others don't, making a choice between two bad answers very difficult (HK, think you pointed this idea out once?).

Remember that the post-analogy SAT has questions that are fuzzier than the analogies were. Hence the statement in the directions to select the "best" answer, rather than the "correct" answer.

I agree! I've always struggled with multiple choice questions for this exact reason. I've often wondered whether the testers were actually trying to test for these nuances or whether they were just poorly written questions. I am currently leaning more towards the latter. I recently gave the 2nd grade IOWA tests to my son, and there were three or four questions where I really wasn't sure which answer they wanted. I could hear my son talking through some of the problems and could tell he was also reading way too much into some of the questions.

Yes, that one is a perennial problem for my DD, too.

Personally, she and I both feel that the ACT is a far better-constructed test.

I also suspect, as hinted above, that the Science section may parse out as an ad hoc IQ test, much the way the old-old SAT did. At least if it weren't for the 'speed' aspect of things, it would.

I have tutored the SAT for over 15 years. Countless kids ranging from learning disabled to HG+. Here's my two cents:

Preparing for the test will help. Some more than others. I can usually get a child up 100 points in math (if they are starting below 650.) I get plenty of kids who can score a 750 on any given day but want an 800 (why is a different issue.) A good tutor can usually get them there too. The preparation for those kids has mostly to do with training them to avoid careless errors and identify in advance their own tendencies when it comes to careless errors. But a gifted child typically has no problem internalizing those lessons quickly.

Reading is tough to budge. Maybe 50 points if you are very lucky, but the margin of error is about that, so it is tough to say.

Writing is surprisingly easy to move, again, if you are at a low enough starting point. Grammar isn't taught in school much and the multiple choice portion is very grammar heavy. The essay is graded on a rubric and is pretty formulaic. You might not be able to get someone from an 11 to a 12 (perfect), but you can get most kids up a point or two if they are clearly doing something wrong.

Timing on the test is rarely a major factor. A typical MG or HG kid has time to spare. And because of the way it is scored, where you lose points for wrong answers (as opposed to skipped questions, which result in neither adding nor losing points), the timing often benefits lower performing kids because they don't have time to get to the questions they would get wrong anyway. With all due respect to the prior posters, if a gifted child has issues with the timing, then this is actually an indication that they will, in fact, have trouble at the college level with timed tests. I suppose you could find your way through some college program without timed testing, but it would be difficult. In this sense the timed nature of the SAT is an important element in determining a student's aptitude for college level work, which is of course the primary purpose of the test.

The math portion of the SAT, much more than the ACT, does an excellent job of differentiating those children who do well at school because they are good kids who work hard and do what they are told from those kids who have a natural aptitude for mathematics. The math is much more about creative problem solving then it is about math content. In fact the average student is done learning the content they need by the end of 10th grade. And the computation is minimal, even though you are allowed to use a calculator. Most of my gifted kids won't even use it.

As mentioned in prior posts, the reading section can definitely be an issue for gifted children, because of their ability to see nuance in the questions and answers. This is not an issue in the writing portion of the test.

I think it is worth remembering also the target audience for the SAT (a 17-year old getting ready for college) and the point of the test (assessing aptitude for college-level work.) A child at that age should have the maturity to understand why they are taking the test and the goal -- getting as high a score as possible. Unless there is an underlying issue, a 17-year old with a high aptitude for college level work will be able to modify their style in order to complete the task successfully -- this is what we have to do in real life! If they cannot, that might not be a statement about their abstract intelligence, but it very well does say something about their ability to adapt to a demanding college-level environment as an independent adult.

This is not to say the SAT is the end all, be all. It unfair in all sorts of ways, starting but by no means ending with the ability to tutor to it. But it is just a small piece of a college application, after all. And for the gifted crew, once you go above 700 in a subject area, scoring higher really makes no difference.

Back to the OP's question - yes, you can prep but it only helps so much. Though folks here disagree with me on a lot of things, I think that the answers indicate that most folks plateau on the SAT score at some point, which means that prep can't get most kids to a 2400.

I think that everyone here can be "right" with their views of the SAT and ACT - different folks, different learning styles, different test-taking abilities means that what is easier for one person might not work that way for another.

A few folks said that the math sections didn't show their kid's true ability, and we saw that too. However, it showed my eldest to be good at math, even though that is her weakest subject. She is happy that she will have completed her college math requirement this semester with Calculus I (though she may take Statistics - she sees the value in that for any major). With a 730 on the SAT math and a 35 on ACT math, the mailings from engineering schools came rolling in - and we had a good laugh about her studying engineering (DH and I are both engineers).

DD18 would say that she preferred the ACT because she got a comparable or better score on it than the SAT. She studied for the SAT while she did not study for the ACT. And though she finished all sections on both tests, she would say that the ACT is cranking out straightforward problems at a rapid rate - something she is very good at doing. I realize that the speed thing is not a strength for everyone, but it is just part of the test. However she is nowhere near PG so she doesn't have the potential of many kids here. As I have said before, my kids would have higher batting averages if they were just a bit faster to first base, but you typically have to manage with your strengths and weaknesses with the rules we are given in many situations throughout life.

IQ tests are timed too now.

The SAT and ACT are supposed to predict (with error) the grades a student will get in college and whether he or she will graduate. A recent study found that two of the ACT sections, Science and Reading, have no incremental predictive ability over the English and Mathematics sections

http://www.nber.org/papers/w17119
Improving College Performance and Retention the Easy Way: Unpacking the ACT Exam
Eric P. Bettinger, Brent J. Evans, Devin G. Pope
NBER Working Paper No. 17119
Issued in June 2011
NBER Program(s): ED LS
Colleges rely on the ACT exam in their admission decisions to increase their ability to differentiate between students likely to succeed and those that have a high risk of under-performing and dropping out. We show that two of the four sub tests of the ACT, English and Mathematics, are highly predictive of positive college outcomes while the other two subtests, Science and Reading, provide little or no additional predictive power. This result is robust across various samples, specifications, and outcome measures. We demonstrate that focusing solely on the English and Mathematics test scores greatly enhances the predictive validity of the ACT exam.

Oh great.

slight hijack—

At what age are some of you finding your kids ready to tackle/try the SAT or ACT?
What kind of testing had the completed before taking this on.

My DS is in 5th grade, we really don't have anything planned for the next few years.
The school he is going to says they would like all their students to try it before they finishes 8th grade.

I think it's that they have "little or no additional" predictive ability, over and above what you already get from the English and Mathematics subtest.

Science and/or Reading considered in isolation may well have high predictive ability.

Yes, you summarized the paper better than I did.

Somehow Tortuga's post is prior to mine, but didn't actually show up on the board until later. Tortuga, you did a good job of stating what I was trying to say.

As for the Math and English ACT scores meaning more - some schools use only those two sections. I know that is what Pitt did when my eldest applied there (and that actually helped her to receive some merit aid). I don't really understand it, since I would think that Reading (comprehension) would be more important than grammar. It seems that comprehension is more important on the SAT - many schools only look at CR+M, or give less weight to Writing.

As for when to take the SAT - my kids did that in 7th grade. We are in an "SAT area" so we didn't even consider the ACT. One reason I might hesitate to use the ACT for a younger kid is that the pre-HS scores do not get wiped off of their account. With the SAT, scores for pre-HS kids get wiped away in June or July unless you make a specific request to keep the score.

thanks for the reply NSG.

You say the ACT scores stick. Is that true even if done through a Talent Search?

Is there a way to prep students for this? Is there a way to teach them to respond to these types of questions?

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.

You need to be careful here about mistaking correlation with causation. While statistically, it might be true that admission rates correlate to the highest scores, my experience leads me to believe that is not the *reason* for the admissions.

The elite schools (including the one I attended) have the ability to fill their entire class with valedictorians, or those with 2400 on their SAT. Yet they do not. I had a few classmates with scores averaging around 600 per subject! The fact of the matter is that SAT scores are not a huge factor in the decision-making process (yes, this is coming from someone who makes a living tutoring the SAT.) The top-tier schools are looking to create a class of very special individuals and thus are looking much more closely at what unique contribution each applicant can make to their student body. People who can distinguish themselves from the masses of other high-acheivers are the ones who get in.

In less competitive schools those perfect SAT scores can make a difference, but because a 2400 actually might serve to distinguish someone at that school, unlike at a Harvard, Stanford, MIT....

Again, my experience is strictly anecdotal (and a little bit based on conversations with admissions departments), but it is extensive. Once a kid is over 700, that SAT score isn't going to keep them *out* of anywhere. By the same token an 800 will never get a kid *in* at an elite school. Once you are in the 700-800 range, the other parts of your package are going to have a much more substantial impact on your application. While it may be true that there are more interesting applicants who score an 800 than interesting ones who score a 700, the interesting applicant who had the flu on test day and scored a 700 as a result has no less chance of getting in than he would have had with an 800.

How about a question (on a multi-choice test without calculators) like:

14.2697541/0.1379=

[A] 1.03479
[B] 10.3479
[C] 103.479
[D] 1034.79
[E] 10347.9

Actually my example supports point (1) but contradicts point (2). The best approach for this specific type of question is to look at the options and choose the best option. Nobody, regardless of their personal test-taking style, should be first actually calculating 14.2697541/0.1379 and then looking at the options.

Agreed - just glancing at the answers reveals that there is only one option with the correct order of magnitude - the others are all ridiculous. This is why a true number sense/ability to estimate the range within which a sane answer exists is way important than learning a mechanical algorithm - not to mention what a time suck doing that under the clock would be followed by then finding the closest answer LOL

How exactly is someone who often gets confused and/or slowed down by the options in multiple choice tests supposed to know that these particular options wont confuse them or slow them down without looking at them? Such a student would have to play the percentages, and if ignoring the choices and working the problems is a net benefit, then that's what they will do every time.

If that's what they do in this example, they deserve to do badly and I hope they will, because I don't want someone who blindly follows their favourite method, without considering whether it's appropriate in this case, in my university class, thank-you-very-much!

Specifically, an amount of test-savviness that would lead someone to think "wow, that's a hard sum, bet I'm not really supposed to work that out" and decide not to use their usual procedure here doesn't seem too much to ask.

That said, from what I've seen of SAT questions specifically, the kind of question you couldn't sensibly work out first is rare, perhaps non-existent, on that test.

For SAT math preparation, it might be a good idea in the early stages for students to work on SAT multiple choice questions with the choices concealed (treating them as short answer questions), to see what math they can do. As the test date approached, the preparation would more closely resemble an actual exam, with students not required to work every problem from scratch.

Thanks for all the input - think I'm a little clearer on it now - sure glad I don't have to do it!

Somehow I forgot to mention the inadvertent method of SAT math prep that I used: I was a teacher's assistant for geometry my junior year.

I agree with this-- and honestly, there comes a point at which it's nearly impossible for a person to move a math score much, either.

DD is in that boat with math. 96th-98th percentile is about as good as it is ever going to get for her because of her issues with careless errors (and test questions written to discriminate ON that basis and without a way to 'sense-check' answers) and her relatively slow calculation speed are her enemies. It wasn't the mathematical concepts in question-- because what she misses is completely random. She'll miss as many 'easy' questions as hard ones.

Interesting-- DD also maintains that tutoring pre-algebra through geometry was excellent preparation. She definitely has a rock-solid grasp of the math itself. Her calculation difficulties aren't the same thing at all, in spite of what they do to her scores in math.

Test "prep" actually hurt her ability to do critical reading, so we ditched that early on and just let her see the formatting enough times to get a feel for it. She went right back to perfect/near-perfect scores.