In fact, we had very bright kids at our eh public school, who were then taking AP Calculus, who did not know all of the math that was on the new PSAT - found out when they went to a very good prep class.
I can't speak to the new SAT, but was very surprised to read this - in general this shouldn't be true at all. My high school ds just took the regular PSAT this month, and I graded a practice test for him - none of the math was anywhere near the level of Calculus, but taking a practice test was helpful for ds because he realized he wasn't recalling a few things quickly that he'd studied years before and not used recently. I wonder if that's not more likely what happened with the AP Calc students mentioned here - they hadn't reviewed similar problems since pre-Algebra etc, or - if they *hadn't* ever been exposed to them, something is glaringly missing in their school district's math curriculum? Or maybe, if they are subject accelerated, they skipped over or had some pieces of curriculum left out that wasn't thought necessary for moving ahead in math?
polarbear
