I wish I had had the chance to take this, I could have gotten a perfect score. Taking the SAT as an ESL student those obscure words just kill you. There is a set of words that appear nowhere in modern English other than on an SAT test.
Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
111–120 of 152 posts
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Analogies are legitimate tests of reasoning ability. As I recall, however, the analogies of the "old" old test often relied on obscure words. This turned them into de facto vocabulary tests, defeating their purpose as pure assessments of reasoning. At the very least, vocabulary became a confounding variable in assessing the specific aptitude that analogies were meant to assess. One could make a strong argument for pl…
I always assumed analogies were explicitly designed as a mechanism for testing vocabulary, not reasoning. I don't understand how analogies would have any value in testing reasoning skills. I can't imagine an analogy question that isn't either obvious or subjective.
why not both?
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#113Sounds like they're dumbing down the SAT. Those soon-to-be-cut "obscure" vocabulary words are critical for mastering English.
Really? When studying for the SAT I saw words that I have never seen again.
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#114Am I the only one here that's bothered by a further narrowing of the expected knowledge of students? A good engineer or programmer isn't a human calculator who can bang out hundreds of caclulations per minute or recite petty facts in a very specific area. Good programmers and engineers draw on their wide breadth of knowledge, and the deep understanding it generates, to solve complex and abstract problems. Anecdotally…
I agree. I would actually prefer if the test subjects were considered new to all students, and they were expected to become experts in those subjects before taking the test. What you need to score for is the ability to learn and apply the knowledge that you already have to new subjects, not to repeat the basics. You're ready for college when you're able to learn new things and apply them quickly.
It's a good thing IMO that people have to learn 'SAT words', it filters out the ones that are able to put in the effort to expand their vocabulary, and also retain this new knowledge.
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, to expand on what I meant, Population growth -> Naturally leads to more people willing to criticize the SAT because percentages. Especially if there remains a similar or greater level of exposure to it, which there has. Population growth -> Larger applicant pool, and assuming Yale or whoever is unwilling to drop the SAT as a filtering mechanism, naturally means they'll raise their various bars, including the SA…
Obviously you would expect Yale to raise SAT medians in addition to other criteria as the number of applicants goes up, in order to maintain the class size (which it has done for the relevant time). What's interesting is how much the bars are raised relative to each other. Remember, the criteria aren't perfectly correlated. If you go from top 4% SAT to top 2%, and top 10% GPA to top 5%, you should expect the number o…
Hrm. Couple things that come to mind, if you want to keep poking:
* how did the distribution of SAT scores among applicants change during that period?
* how did tuitions change over that period?
* what's the GPA distribution versus the SAT distribution? At some point we went from a 0-4 GPA scale to a 0-5 GPA scale, and IIRC, the SAT's numbers have moved around as well. Can the preference for modifying the SAT bar be related to finer granularity being available? You sort of allude to this in your original comment. GPA may not have gone up simply because it's a worse metric than even the SAT.
* did the rise coincide with all standardized tests, or just the SAT I? SAT II? AP exams? IB?
* was the applicant pool affected by accepting transfer students or affirmative action type of deals?
* what does "top X%" actually mean in this case? Is it a stated admissions policy? Or is it it just that students below a certain SAT score virtually never qualify on some other criteria?
Sorry if some of these would be answered by your links. I'm less interested finding the answer and more just giving you a sounding board.
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#116At Khan Academy, we're really excited to work with the College Board to provide awesome, free test prep to everyone. We're putting huge emphasis on really learning the material instead of practicing test-taking skills that won't be useful afterwards. Here's a little more about the partnership if you're interested: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/05/khan-academy-gets-major-par...
As a former SAT prep teacher, I'm very excited to learn about Khan Academy's partnership with the College Board. Previously, success on the SAT seemed to depend solely on how much money was spent on SAT prep. Glad to hear that the College Board is interested in leveling the playing field.
I didn't spend a dime on SAT prep and I did reasonably well (good enough to get into Caltech).
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#117I wish I had had the chance to take this, I could have gotten a perfect score. Taking the SAT as an ESL student those obscure words just kill you. There is a set of words that appear nowhere in modern English other than on an SAT test.
If I was on a college admissions committee, I'd take into account ESL status when comparing verbal scores from one applicant to the next. It only makes sense.
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a former SAT prep teacher, I'm very excited to learn about Khan Academy's partnership with the College Board. Previously, success on the SAT seemed to depend solely on how much money was spent on SAT prep. Glad to hear that the College Board is interested in leveling the playing field.
I didn't spend a dime on SAT prep and I did reasonably well (good enough to get into Caltech).
Perhaps you didn't give money to Princeton Review or Kaplan, but I'm guessing you didn't walk home barefoot to abusive parents in Louisiana either.
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
These tests are for admission to an American college / university. Basic knowledge of Western culture is immensely useful if you're going to be in such an environment, both for studies and for social purposes.
Yes, basic knowledge is useful even if you aren't going to college. But the problem is that the tests reference arcane parts of western culture that an immigrant wouldn't be reasonably expected to know. My parents are both immigrants and I was born in the US (I have lived here my entire life), and I still had a hard time understanding some of the allusions in the CR portion. They aren't references to popular culture;…
The only question I recall from my SAT required knowledge of the recipes for various alcoholic drinks. I thought that was a bit unfair as I was well below drinking age, so why would I know that stuff? I'm sure I got that one wrong.
Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the College Board's problem to solve. Their goal with the SAT is to offer colleges a predictor of college success. Why should they try to incorporate a form of affirmative action into their test? Why not leave that up to the admissions offices that will have a more complete picture of the applicant's background?
Making test prep materials more accessible doesn't really sound like affirmative action to me. It's not an attempt to counterbalance this particular socioeconomic bias, but rather to remove it.
The socioeconomic correlation isn't a bias - it reflects the reality that a poor childhood leaves you less prepared to do well in college. Erasing that effect without fully erasing the causes of the effect is a cover-up that defeats the purpose of the SAT.
Making the test harder to hack by acquiring shallow knowledge (like memorizing "SAT words" without actually being well-read enough to have seen or used them before) is a good thing, because it will make the test a more accurate predictor of the applicant's general level of knowledge. But simply making those test-prep tools more affordable and easier to find will only have the effect of compressing the distribution of scores, making the SAT a less discriminating test in the technical sense and thus a less useful measurement.