<p>Is the SAT really a reasoning test if simple strategies can boost your score by 300-400 points? </p>
<p>Why do people think that if you have a low SAT score you can't make the cut? </p>
<p>Do you equate test scores with intelligence? </p>
<p>High ability students do attend schools that are not up to standards, and many of them have low test scores.</p>
<p>If you’re willing and able to learn and employ “simple strategies”, that implies that you know how to reason at even abstract levels.</p>
<p>Maybe the old SAT pre-1974 or something was more of a reasoning test. It was almost the equivalence of an IQ-test.</p>
<p>But onto the subject at hand: it is a reasoning test even if sharpening your testformat skills will improve your scores.</p>
<p>From my first test to my third I got an increase by 370 points, and I am an international applicant. This improvement came from doing practice tests and finding some strategies on my own.</p>
<p>There was one study that had been done some time ago… and it pretty much stated that all IQ tests (and thus the SAT Reasoning Test) are based on what you have learned, and not your actual level of intelligence or capacity for intellectual thought. A true reasoning test would have to test your logic on things you have never seen before. I have read through a couple LSAT tests, and I would guess that they are a more accurate estimation of your ability to reason than the SAT.</p>
<p>One of the main problems with the SAT is that it revolves around rote memorization. Your vocabulary is simply a measure of your exposure to certain words. When a word is not commonly used in your vernacular, it takes memorization to get a question on that word right on the SAT. I believe this concept is similar with math, just in different ways. You can know how numbers work, but most students must memorize certain applications of those numbers to do well on the SAT. With concerns to writing, you must memorize and recognize certain grammatical rules. And the essay is a joke that doesn’t allow you to properly expand upon the topic at hand. It is a mediocre estimate of a student’s writing abilities as a whole- 25 minutes, while a good amound of time, is not long enough to write a proper essay on whichever prompt they throw at you.</p>
<p>So there, I am done ranting. I’ve wasted too many hours having to study for this test; even though I scored well on it, I find it to be a load of crap. But I doubt it will change anytime soon. (Perhaps, though, when our generation heads College Board, we will remember the horrors we were submitted to, and change the format of the test.)</p>
<p>Seeing as it was made by a Nazi professor at princeton to prove the intelligence of white people, yes, I believe many people question the SATs validity.</p>
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<p>well, i believe he denounced those racist views before he even began working on the SATs</p>
<p>thus he probably did not create the SAT to prove the superiority of nords or teutons or whatever you want to call them</p>
<p>tests like the SAT correlate more strongly with ethnicity and family income than it does anything else</p>
<p>Yes, but then again I question everything.</p>
<p>i took the test once, didn’t study at all, and did extremely well, but i also agree that the test is not the best measuring tool. however, that does not mean it is useless.</p>
<p>and as for the different sections…</p>
<p>the writing is pretty much useless. 25 minutes is not a lot of time, and i read an article that found a very strong correlation between the length of the essay and the score.</p>
<p>the math section is fairly accurate, imo. sunshowers23 mentioned that math is just memorization of formulas, and that is accurate. but how else can you test math? you cannot give someone who is studying pre-algebra an integral and expect them to be able to figure it out. the sat writers do a fairly good job of giving a broad range of basic math problems.</p>
<p>the CR section is a lot trickier. sunshowers23 also said this is about memorization and exposure to lots of words, and this is partly right, however it is also about context. by reading through the sentence, a student should be able to at least eliminate a few wrong choices.</p>
<p>also, going back to the OP, aren’t all tests invalid then? you can simply cram the night before and do perfectly well, but that doesn’t mean you’ll remember everything later on.</p>
<p>Considering how easy the math is and how much of an effect studying SHOULD have, I think it’s remarkable how low a lot of people score. Math-phobia is amazing.</p>
<p>integration annoys me to no end so i’m just glad they don’t test it in the SAT 
but yeah, i did just 2 practice tests before taking the SAT and scored decently so i’m guessing it really depends on the kind of questions you get…and of course your luck</p>
<p>lol, maxed 590 on those things, still got in… </p>
<p>…I guess smarts aint everything lol</p>