Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Effectiveness/advisability - SAT prep young kids?

DS9 has outgrouwned the Explore and I am planning on having him take the SAT next year. I don't have the Explore test scores back yet but he already had good scores last year and this year he indicated that the test was really easy except for the language section.

Anyhow, I had him take the three math sections of a practice test and he scored around 600. I imagined that he made some careless errors but mostly it was that he hadn't had real algebra or geometry (only elementary algebra/geometry and pre-algebra) and couldn't figure out how to do some of those problems within the time constraints ( a littel more than a minute a problem). However, he is scheduled to take Algebra next year in 5th grade so I imagine his score would go up next year.

I am looking at the SAT as a way to track his progress as well as to qualify for membership in SET (Study of Exceptional Talent), which requires a 700 score before age 13. Obviously, he has three more years to improve his score to 700. I am asking for opinions/expeiences on how likely his score would improve to 700 next year with and without prep. By prep, I don't mean a full-fledged course, but perhaps exposure to the topics and a few practice tests.

There have been studies, which I don't have the time to look up right now, that track how taking the test multiple times, taking prep courses, etc can effect the score. I would try to find them if I were you because I remember there being an odd effect where taking the test too many times could actually begin to cause a decrease in the score.

Our kids get limited if their only exposure is to the school's standard curriculum. I'd think making sure that topic coverage and range is complete makes sense (SAT does have some elementary geometry questions, too.)

Practice tests also make sense to me, particularly if he finds them fun. Helps to reduce some standard errors. Yesterday, in exploring apps with my DS who has a current obsession of finding the perfect math app on the iPad, I tried an SAT prep quiz. It had some area of triangles stuff. And I missed a question about the height of a ball after 4 bounces by forgetting to subtract the initial case in the calculation.

I've been looking into this as well for my DD12. The SAT math questions are not that difficult--meaning they are easier than math problems you'll see in those math competitions for kids. And the range of topics is quite limited compared to what you might expect. For example, there are no calculus problems.
Extrapolating from what you've said that he can already get 600 without studying or having had formal algebra study, I believe that targeted exposure to several topics in algebra 1 and 2, geometry, and trig would be likely to help his score go up over 700 within a year. If not, then certainly within 2 years.

But be very careful not to "teach to the SAT" because I found when I skipped through too much, it took the fun out of learning math, even though my DD could handle it. Now because she is older, I only teach her when she asks me to, and I make sure to give her a more well-rounded experience, and it works out fine because she gets her math "playtime" in before coming back to me to learn more.

Just for fun, I'll share with you our last topic that we discussed--how to multiply binomials. This came about because we were chatting about solving linear equations and coming to a lot of good conclusions, so I suggested we move on to thinking about how to solve a quadratic equation and compare the two types of equations to get more perspective.

I told her that in order to solve an arbitrary quadratic equation, she first needs to be able to factor trinomials of degree 2. She asked me how to do that and I said factoring is the opposite of multiplying, so first she should practice multiplying things that will give you trinomials of degree 2.

I remembered that her 4th grade teacher had taught them to multiply binomials (with numbers and no variables) and so I could connect it to that. She accepted it pretty readily that you could multiply 2 binomials and get something with 3 terms back, and then she seemed to lose interest so I stopped there, thinking that was plenty for one day.

Next time she asks me to teach her more about math, I will give her several different types of binomial multiplication problems and let her work through them and discover the patterns as she goes along.

Also, I take great care to read through the school's curriculum and try not to teach anything that will be taught in school, to prevent her from becoming extremely bored in school when the teacher starts teaching the same thing. Or if I do, I'll teach it in as different a way as I can think of. Very rarely have I had to teach her something that I knew would be taught in school.

I was going to start a thread, but this is similar enough I'll ask here.

My 7yo son (in 1st grade, but doing 4th grade Math) hasn't done any of these tests yet (and he'll first start with SCAT and EXPLORE when possible), but the JHU CTY SET Math SAT 700 is in our eventual sights. I also saw online a higher target http://www.tip.duke.edu/node/1347 (seventh graders earning a perfect score on one or more sections of the ACT or SAT) which is another tempting target.

My question is this. How prepared for the Math SAT (or ACT) are you after having completed each of the standard courses Prealgebra, Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra 2? (Is it true that no further courses are needed to cover the topics?) I'm not sure how to quantify that, but hopefully the question makes sense. I've never taken any American tests myself, but we live here now.

Is there something to be said for completing these courses first before attempting Math SAT/ACT? Or is it better to have a couple of attempts, say once a year, before that, as a warm-up and to see where you are? (He would complete the courses while still young enough to qualify for the awards.)

Have a look at some past tests, but the maths content of the SAT is truly paltry. For geometry I don't remember anything beyond "angles of a triangle add to 180 degrees" ever being required. As a repeated test of progress, it's surely worthless; it's a speed and accuracy test. If SET gives someone something they want, then sure; but tbh, it's a bit "do you want to be a member of a club for which that's the entry test?". Maybe 700 on the SAT once meant being exceptionally talented, but I don't believe it does now; it means being fast and accurate with easy questions, and don't they get enough of that in school?

ColinsMum, revealing her cynicism ;-)

ETA Here is a thread I made when my DS was 7 and this briefly seemed like a good idea.

According to http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalence/sat-individual
a 700 on the current SAT math is equivalent to a 710 on the older SAT math. The College Board is saying that it has not become easier to get a 700.

I haven't looked at older SATs, but there's no inconsistency between the hypotheses:
a) High scores on SAT-M are as rare now as formerly;
b) High score on SAT-M is no longer as good an indicator of mathematical talent as it used to be.

You can make it hard to score high by it requiring insight or by it requiring speed; a shift from the former to the latter would allow both a and b to be true.

Thanks for this perspective, ColinsMum! The SAT seems like a perfectly servicable device for finding out who's got good fluency with mathematical thinking, for purposes of college admission. But for determining who's truly exceptional, not so much.

I suppose SET's reasoning is that they're looking for kids who reach this level of achievement extremely young, and are hoping that's a reasonable proxy for being able to go much much further in the ensuing years.

Bostonian, it's not a question of whether it's "easier" or "harder," as measured by the percentage of people who achieve a particular score. ColinsMum's point is about what is being measured.

Not sure the age of these, but I had found these sample questions:


They seem like they do require some thought and fluency.