<p>Ok CC so I've been thinking.
Seeing as the translation from raw score to your actual score on both the ACT and SAT is an ever fluctuating curve, wouldn't it make sense that the tests nearest dec/jan are the easiest to do well on? Heres my logic:
First of all, we know that the ACT and the SAT scoring curves do change a bit every year. I.E. the amount of english questions for a 36 or an 800 may vary by one or two every year. Yes, I know this isn't alot but it still does change, and it changes based on what College Board and ACT people decide will be full score, and so on and so forth down to the smallest score after looking at people's raw scores. They know that one test may just be a bit harder and by looking at national raw scores can adjust for that.
Secondly, (and this is where I may offend people so please read carefully) by comparing with how they grade the AP Tests I would assume that the scoring curve is created looking at all raw scores, not just top scores. Therefor, like on the AP Tests, the more lower raw scores occur the higher chance someone with a higher raw score will get a higher actual score. Since the SAT is also done by the college board, wouldn't that mean that the more people with lower raw scores that take the test the higher chance someone with a higher raw score will get that 800, 780, etc.
Third, the date
The question now becomes which test date has the most amount of people who I think are less intelligent than me (I know this is starting to sound hostile to some folks... but I want that 2400). While there are various factors that determine when someone takes a standardized test, and there will always be someone who gets every single question right at every testing date, I'm looking for the largest amount of lower achieving people. Hence why I have decided at the dec/jan months. While there will be smart people who have worked their butts off for months at this test, there will also be (I think) lots of people who have waited to the last moment to take their standardized test(s) and do not care either because they don't need to or they don't want to. Most colleges accept scores up until the middle of the winter for regular admission.
By the same logic that tells me the more kids who take an AP test that haven't taken a comprehensive course the higher my chances are of getting a 5, that should also mean that those months are the easiest for me to get a higher score on a standardized test.
If you think I'm crazy, wasting my time, or just plain wrong, please tell me why
Thanks!
My apologies if i've offended anyone. But as the intelligence food chain is there will always be someone smarter than you and someone you're smarter than.</p>
<p>My general intuition has always been that this sort of thing is always wishful thinking. There are so many students taking the SAT worldwide that the sample size becomes large enough to normalize the bell-curve across all test dates. Yes there is slight variation, but that can’t be counted on as there are a countless number of very successful and unsuccessful test takers for every sitting.</p>
<p>You’re probably wasting your time.</p>
<p>I agree with flashandcrash, each testing date there are so many people taking the SAT that it doesn’t really make a difference which one you take. If you’ve taken statistics, note that the standard error tends to shrink as your sample size gets larger. Since you have many hundreds of thousands taking the SAT on any given test date, there will be very little fluctuation.</p>
<p>Curves for the test are pre-determined.</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered if there’s a correlation between test dates and test difficulty. Now Collegeboard is a company not-for-profit company after all, but lately it’s profit margins have told a different story. The official Collegeboard site itself says most students take the SAT twice, once during the Spring of Junior year and another during Fall of Senior year. So in theory, late Spring tests should be slightly harder so that students get lower scores and buy tCB’s prep material. </p>
<p>This is all speculation of course but I don’t see the harm in taking the SAT in December/January like you said. Even if all your predictions were bogus, at least the placebo effect will help a little bit.</p>
<p>I think the OP may be onto something. That logic, I think, makes sense, though it could’ve been explained adequately in a few sentences with particular emphasis on the content of the thir program. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to bank on something like that. Since it’ll be others’ last times, it’ll be the OP’s last as well.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the AIME exams are literally determined by a coin flip. That is, with two given exams, the first exam goes to AIME I with heads and the second exam goes to an alternate AIME II (or vice versa). I wouldn’t be too surprised if the College Board used a similar method.</p>
<p>erikthered posted on a different website the curves for different months. I ran some confidence intervals just for the heck of it (I’m a total AP stats fan) and this is what I got: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1336099-sat-curves-confidence-intervals-curious-soul.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1336099-sat-curves-confidence-intervals-curious-soul.html</a></p>
<p>Like I said in the thread, you can’t draw any conclusions from this. There was very little data to work with, and I only compared the scaled score from a raw of 53. If you haven’t taken AP stats, the gist of it is that I found no significant differences between test dates for the one thing that I tested.</p>
<p>But anyways, I’ve always been against any “which date is easiest” thinking. Sorry. You have a nice theory, but it just isn’t likely and even if it was the effect is too small.</p>
<p>Yes this is very true. for the ACT anyway, there’s a test date where many 7-8th graders take the exam as a part of a program (many of the high average/smarter kids score 18-22) </p>
<p>It’s February (just pulled up my scores) lol i got a 20 (15E, 20M, 22R, 21S) </p>
<p>^^ this pulls down the curve</p>
<p>My math distribution for the Feb ACT my junior feb date: </p>
<p>14
15
13
Math score:27</p>
<p>For my state’s testing: (is IL the smartest state that gives out ACT to 100%? don’t have time ATM to pull it up, any NE states do it?)
17
15
13
Math score: 27</p>
<p>Well. Yes, that was totally a waste of time
But. Wishful thinking I can take.
And you guys are all right, this probably would have no effect on me personally, at least in any way I will be able to tell.
Food for thought?</p>
<p>Cheerioswithmilk is right: there isn’t any month statistically different in difficulty from the others (at least on the basis of the erikthered data).</p>
<p>But even if it were the case that, say, May was clearly a harder test on average, there would be no advantage or disadvantage to taking the test in May. (I’m ignoring psychological effects that might make someone’s performance better or worse if he or she knew that the test was harder.)</p>
<p>Why is this? Your score is not dependent on or affected by others’ scores. A large group of weak students could take the test, or a large group of very strong students could take the test, you would still get the same score.</p>
<p>The curve which maps from your raw score to your scaled score is based solely on the difficulty of the test, which varies slightly from one administration to another. A raw score of 53 on an easier test yields a lower scaled score than a 53 on a more difficult test. So, no advantage or disadvantage.</p>