<p>intelligence. Now that I'm reading the messages though...who populates this place? Are they all elitist children of foreign parents who just grind specific things until they can get a high score on a test? The smartest guy I've ever known got a 34 on the ACT, but people on this website who claim the same are a dime a dozen. They then proceed to spout some of the most illogical, poorly informed elitist crap that I have ever had the displeasure of reading. It appears that I was more than a little wrong. Anyone else experience this?</p>
<p>For the most part, yes.</p>
<p>Should be. I wish they prohibitted studying for it lol (only because I was too lazy to and I hate when people assume you studied your *** off because you did well).</p>
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<p>Elitist? Maybe.
Foreign parents? Maybe.</p>
<p>Grinding specific things for a high score? Yes. That’s how you get good at anything that requires skill: practice. (Though not necessarily doing exactly the same thing over and over again.) You can get good at the SAT without being a genius, and it is entirely possible that people can do so while also being able to come up with “illogical, poorly informed elitist crap”. (One of my 2400 friends made up obscure European mathematicians for his SAT essay and got a 12. Now, that’s crap.)</p>
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<p>To add on to what energize said, the majority of tests, including the ACT and SAT and even so-called “IQ tests”, show improvements in score upon familiarity with the test’s structure…for example, the SAT mainly grades the essay portion of its writing section based on length, not quality (College Board denies this, but there’s strong anecdotal evidence). Quoting a college interviewer: “sometimes you just have to give them what they want”. There’s also a raging debate somewhere on CC about how kids who can afford expensive test-prep programs or tutoring gain an unfair advantage on the test, and so on.</p>
<p>There’s also many (and by many, I mean that this is at least the fourth one I’ve seen) threads criticizing the elitism of CC, so you’re definitely not alone.</p>
<p>I think standardized test scores are only indicative of intelligence as long as they’ve been achieved without preparation. When students take the SAT for the first time, without any prior knowledge of its content or mechanics, their performance should be wholly dependent on their intelligence–or at least those aspects of their intelligence that are measured by the SAT. When they start preparing for it, they enhance those thinking skills that the SAT rewards–skills which are generally the byproducts of high overall intelligence–without becoming “smarter” in the process. This is, of course, a very broad and slightly offensive generalization, but I think it holds true more often than it doesn’t.</p>
<p>(On the other hand, the ability to raise your SAT score by 300 points is also quite impressive.)</p>
<p>Apart from that, I agree that some people with stellar SAT scores on CC seem to be quite emotionally immature, unperceptive and/or self-centered. But then again, we’re teenagers.</p>
<p>People on the internet always talk crap…</p>
<p>Not sure why.</p>