<p>momofthreeboys: Sure, for parents who can foot the bill for Harvard or Tufts, the measly $500 or so scholarship that those schools offer isn’t an inducement to bother with the NM program.</p>
<p>But for many of us the free ride that other schools offer is a big deal.</p>
<p>I never, ever said that it wasn’t a good program or that students should not avail themselves of the opportunity if presented. If your school is not offering the PSAT to juniors you should talk to your guidance office or at the very least have your child take it at a nearby school especially if you suspect your children might make the cutoff.</p>
<p>mom3collegekids notes," I would truly wonder what was wrong if a “truly smart kid” with a 4.0 GPA repeatedly “bombed” his SATs. Unless the kid has anxiety attacks or some other similar issue, I would wonder how he managed to ace his course midterms and final exams, but not manage to do at least “pretty good” on the SAT. I wouldn’t expect “bombing” from an A student who can manage to do well on classroom exams."</p>
<p>Response: Mom2collegekids, are you kidding? Getting a high GPA is a function of academic ability PLUS work ethic. Generally, kids that study hard, have good study skills, and strong memories can get a good GPA, assuming that they have decent academic skills to begin with. Tests in high school merely require an understanding of what was taught.</p>
<p>The SAT is a VERY different animal. It requires kids to think outside the box and to master types of questions that really weren’t covered in high school. Moreover, the questions were not straightforward. Many were designed to be tricky. Also, and perhaps most importantly, the SAT is a VERY, VERY time oriented test.</p>
<p>I have met dozens of kids who would get every question right on the SAT if they were given an extra hour to finish the test. However, because they aren’t as quick in answering the questions, they bombed the test.
I should note that I didn’t feel that the ACT was as time sensitive as that of the SAT. Perhaps, that was just my subjective feeling.</p>
<p>Einstein was an excellent example. He was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. However, he was a very deep thinker. Ideas had to be mulled over in his mind before he could come to any conclusions. There are many kids who are extremely smart that get penalized due to the severely timed nature of the test. Note, this has nothing to do with either how smart the kid is or how strong the high school program was. The severely timed nature of the test is probably the single biggest flaw in the exam.</p>
<p>Frankly, I always thought that both the ACT and SAT II were better tests and more indicative of college preparation due to their relevance of the high school subject matter. However, they too have the same flaw in being unduly time oriented.</p>
<p>In addition, I remember seeing some older stats about correlations between SAT scores and college performance. Although there was some positive correlation, it wasn’t that significant. If I remember it had about a 55-60%% correlation,which was just above that of random chance. which would have been 50-50.</p>
<p>Finally, I have noticed great disparities among kids with the same scores especially at the upper levels. I can honestly say that I have seen kids with high 600s, low 700s show a LOT more talent and ability than their peers with even higher scores. Once a kid reaches around the 700 mark, they can easily be as good if not better than those that get 750 or even 800 on each part. </p>
<p>What does,however, seem to be correlative with SAT scores are family income and particularly the affluence of the neighborhood that the school is in! Parents from affluent neighborhoods can spend lot of money on tutoring, and other skills necessary to improve SAT performance. At our high school, for example, some Asian parents had their kids tutored in a group session for two years before the actual SAT with some startling success!</p>
<p>Bottom line: From my experience of tutoring many kids, I have found that both the SAT I and PSAT are not the best tests for predicting college performance. This is why many schools are becoming SAT optional schools.</p>
<p>"I would truly wonder what was wrong if a “truly smart kid” with a 4.0 GPA repeatedly “bombed” his SATs. "</p>
<p>I would guess that what was wrong was attending a weak school system or getting As by doing well on extra credit and the kind of assignments like outlining that many teachers give so that students who need more help can learn the material.</p>
<p>Sometimes students who seem to be extremely smart in school due to their getting high grades are really very hard working, highly motivated students who work closely with teachers to give teachers exactly what is needed to get high grades. </p>
<p>Such motivated, hard working students eventually may do far better in their careers than will the class clown who has a C-average and sky high scores.</p>
<p>"when a parent has asked me if his/her “straight A” child would likely get a college scholarship, I’ve politely asked if his/her standardized test scores reflect the top percentiles ( 95+ percentiles). Usually the answer is “no”…often the reality is that their “top student” is scoring in the 60-70 percentile - not usually high enough for any merit $$$. :</p>
<p>Such students likely could get merit aid to community colleges and to some second and third tier colleges.</p>
<p>I have been thinking about what makes a NM student. (I feel qualified to do this b/c all 4 of my kids have made it.) They are all smart, but in different ways. Two of them are not that great in creative writing or analyzing poetry , but have excellent vocabularies and grammar skills. All of them, however, are skilled in math (as demonstrated by 5s on AP Calc BC.)</p>
<p>My theory is it’s better to be good at math and pick up the English by reading good literature and living in a family where words matter, than to be naturally good at English but not so much in math. Cause you can’t really “pick up” math. You can learn it if you pay attention in school and are motivated, but formulas and algorithms are not intuitive the way language skills are (if you are a native speaker in a good environment.)</p>
<p>My theory.</p>
<p>Talented people at math can pick it up by themselves. That’s how some middle schoolers get excellent scores on the math part of the SAT. It doesn’t require knowledge of math like calculus either.</p>
<p>I think the greater predictor is if the kids have prepped and learned how to take the PSAT. I would hazard a guess that nationally for the vast majority of students the PSAT is their first exposure to the test style since the test is given in the fall of junior year. Most kids aren’t taking the college prep tests until their junior spring. One of mine participated in a gifted program and took the ACT in middle school, but for my other two the PLAN or the PSAT will be their first time taking a timed test. The majority of the test prep culture is NE and grounded in that regional preference for the SAT test and that particular test style. In my opinion that test prep and familiarity with the test style is probably a stronger predictor of number of NMS students. If districts want to raise their percentiles then they probably would also need to invest in prep classes or administer the PSAT to sophomores as a practice run. Finally, to single out the influence of test prep on only the PSAT is a mistake as all standardized tests results will skew up if the student is prepped or taught to the test. Even the ACT which measures what students have learned can produce better results when students are taught how to “take” the test. Most districts concentrate on prepping and teaching for the tests that comprise their particular state’s NCLB testing and with the exception of the NE most likely PSAT takes a back seat to the state required tests. Many educators dislike the concept of “teaching to the test” so you have those conflicts of parents in general wanting their kids to “score high” and educators disliking teaching to the tests.</p>
<p>The predictors of how kids do on the PSAT/SAT is: socioeconomic status and whether the kids have taken AP and other rigorous courses, and the quality of those AP courses. </p>
<p>It’s a myth that one needs prep courses to do well on the tests.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, there is NO QUESTION that a prep course isn’t needed to do well on the SATs and ACTs. Frankly, most kids can do just as well by studying past tests diligently.</p>
<p>However, due to other time commitments, it just isn’t done my most folks. The prep courses do force kids to practice these tests and put in the required time.</p>
<p>Moreover, contrary to what the college board says, test prep can work and work well too. The catch is that it has to be for a fairly long period of time. As I have noted before, there was a group of parents who hired a test prep tutor to give lessons for two years! Almost every kid in the test prep session did amazinly well on the standardized test.</p>
<p>Admittedly, this is too small a sample to be statistically valid,but it does show the possibilities of long-term test prep.</p>
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<p>I very much appreciate your insight and experience. Much of what you say accords with my own, in education, and having such familiarity with both the ACT and SAT and the different reasons for performance outcomes among students.</p>
<p>Deep thinkers can be very frustrated by the SAT. Mulling over in one’s mind is not an option. Not only are the segments short, but one is essentially penalized for sustaining a thought. (“No wait, we’re doing math now; No wait, we’re immediately doing reading again; whoops, back to math.”) The latter ability may reveal a certain kind of “discipline,” superficially, but it is not the kind of discpline very applicable to college-level learning, as it does not mimic it, even in microcosm. College-level learning requires analogous and parallel thinking, not jerky, staccato shifts between unrelated fields. (Those of us who have always aced analogies may remember when the analogy section was removed from the SAT for political reasons, being that it was correctly discovered that it was a marker for IQ.)</p>
<p>If I had to design a college-prep examination I might find it more revealing to sit the student down with an Anthro or an Econ text, assign a reading passage in it and ask analytical questions about it. Much more like real college. (Can you sustain dense reading for more than 25 minutes? Can you apply what you just read? Can you analyze what you just read in a field not familiar to you, which has its own terms and its own “system?”) Parts of the SAT pretend to do that (weakly), but again, not in sustained or in complex fashion. College is not a race. The SAT is.</p>
<p>I agree with Momofthreeboys: Taking a timed, multiple choice test requires certain test taking skills. Even the SAT website offers specific strategies to improve your results. </p>
<p>The SAT is much trickier than the standardized tests most kids take in school. Obviously if you don’t know the material, you’re not going to do well no matter what, but depending on your familiarity with the test style, you’ll do a better with some test prep beforehand than you otherwise would.</p>
<p>I tutored the SAT for a major test prep company for a few years while in grad school. Primarily the math. I’ve seen many of these exams and the questions are very predictable -simple simultaneous equations that are designed to be solved simply by adding, problems where you should just try numbers (made easy by calculator skills), problems where you should just try answers, simple ratios, etc. The word problems are extremely predictable, as are the geometry problems. </p>
<p>On any given exam, a well prepped and practiced student can race through 80% of these predictable problems. That gives them a long time to work on the few truly challeging problems on the test.</p>
<p>The CR is similar, but not as straightforward. It favors good readers, but there are also skills that can be learned here.</p>
<p>D’s PSAT was not spectacular, SAT was a little better, ACT was good enough to get into few selective programs (ACT=33, took once). PSAT is not reflective of GPA and/or test taking skills. It is not reflective of anything, it is what it is. D’s (college junior) GPA has always been 4.0 so far.</p>
<p>“Northstarmom, there is NO QUESTION that a prep course isn’t needed to do well on the SATs and ACTs. Frankly, most kids can do just as well by studying past tests diligently.”</p>
<p>I don’t think that most kids can do very well on the tests even if they do study diligently past tests or take a test prep course. Not everyone has the ability to do well on those tests no matter how hard they study for them. I know people, for instance, who took the expensive test courses and just managed to score above average.</p>
<p>For the CR part, for instance, having an extensive vocabulary and base of information (typically the type of knowledge base that people who read a great deal have) is vital to doing well on the test. Otherwise, one simply won’t understand the material well enough to answer accurately the questions about it.</p>
<p>There also are people who do extremely well despite not studying at all for the test. This includes some students who do very well on the SATs in middle school.</p>
<p>Some kids would do much better on the test if they were told that if they can narrow choices down to 2, it’s fine to guess because right answers help more than incorrect answers hurt one. Knowing how to pace themselves is another tip that can raise scores so students don’t spend so much time vainly trying to solve difficult questions that they don’t get around to answering the easier ones. Others treat the test as a race, finish early, and don’t bother to check their work. I’m convinced that’s why when I took the PSAT – which I erroneously thought was just a practice for the SAT – that’s why I didn’t make the cutoff for National Merit. I finished the test quickly and then smugly sat there daydreaming until time ran out.</p>
<p>Forgot to mention about D’s comment that her SAT prep class was complete waste of time. She prepped herself for ACT (about 1 hour/day for about 5-6 days) which was much more effective and resulted in better score.</p>
<p>My middle son is the thinker, mull it over, digest it then have a flash of brilliance. He took the PSAT with no practice or anything and I never thought to tell him to watch the time. He got absolutely nailed (and not in a good way) on the first section. I felt really bad for not prompting him about it. I’m not a big one for test prep, but it will help raise the score within limits as the kids are not sideswiped by how the tests are structured, how to adjust for the time issues, etc. BTW I loved the analogy section back when I took the SAT. My oldest would have liked it too and I thought it was unfortunate when they took away that section. It was actually the section that I thought was “fun.”</p>
<p>I will just say this - every kid I tutored that took it seriously increased their composite score over 100 points. That was a good 85% of them. But they didn’t need a tutor - they could learn those skills by reading and practice.</p>
<p>On the other hand, some kids are just plain good at multiple choice exams. I was one of those kids - I just “got” this genre of tests and it didn’t always translate to any other area of my life. I always got over the 97th percentile on any standardized test I took - GRE, GMAT, SAT, PSAT - and I am no genius as my college professors would certainly attest (barely a 3.0 in my EE curriculum).</p>
<p>Case in point - I like working these things for fun. I came home from work one day, and found a sample MCAT exam on the aamc website. I just started working it and scored a 34. This is average for most med schools. Now I know this is not the same as taking the actual test, but it does show something. I assure you, I couldn’t get into med school and would flunk out if I did. But I just have a basic level of knowledge from my bio and chem 20 years ago, plus skill in selecting from alternative answers on an MC test. That’s all it is.</p>
<p>“I am no genius as my college professors would certainly attest (barely a 3.0 in my EE curriculum).”</p>
<p>One doesn’t need to be a genius to do well on tests like the SAT. For the CR art, it does help, however, to have a large store of general information, something that actually is a very big reflector of one’s general knowledge, the factor that makes up a large part of IQ calculations. Having math ability helps on the math part.</p>
<p>One has to be very bright to get even a 3.0 in an EE curriculum. Being average or slightly above average in a curriculum that’s one of academia’s toughest indicates that you are far brighter than is the average college student. No surprise to me that you could do well on tests like the MCAT sample.</p>
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<p>…and regarding the similar follow-up posts…</p>
<p>Hey, I administer them. I know that test-taking skills can be taught. But there is not a single college course that even vaguely replicates the “laboratory” of the SAT environment on a Saturday (or Sunday) morning. None. There are not even many multiple-choice tests in a reputable 4-year college, and most certainly not many at HYPSM and similar illustrious institutions over which so much angst is spent, relative to standardized tests and who “qualifies” to be admitted to and succeed at such illustrious institutions.</p>
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The analogies section of the old SAT was similar to the Similarities section on IQ tests (Wechsler). That is supposed to be the best indicator of brain power in that IQ test.</p>