<p>Why should kids get extra time for SATS (not even going to get into school tests). Plenty of people play the system and get in when they do not need it. If your dumb do you get extra time? NO. So why should you get it for a learning disability. Its just one more way in which they can evaluate applicants, finding the smartest and getting rid of the not as smart. More so IN LIFE YOU DON't GET EXTRA TIME. If you have to solve a problem, you can't say give me 10 more minutes I am an extra time candidate. IT MAKES A TREMENDOUS difference and you know what I would even be OK with it, if they let colleges know. Put a little asterix next to the score...because in this current system its ridiculous. Thoughts, rants flames---share.</p>
<p>Ehh. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't necessarily agree. There really are people who need that extra time. You can't blame someone who has dyslexia for getting a few extra minutes just so they can read. Besides a student with a serious mental disability is not usually a prime candidate to HYPS so why are you so worried? They're not even competing with you. Give the poor kids a break.</p>
<p>^^ well, you must ask, given the severity of their disability, how much extra time should they be given? They may be given more extra time than they actually need, so they may be given a slight advantage. But of course, this is all very hard to quantify, so we don't know whether they do have an advantage.</p>
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Besides a student with a serious mental disability is not usually a prime candidate to HYPS so why are you so worried?
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<p>Thats my point, a lot of kids who are not seriously mentally handicapped get extra time. I have a friend, who is bright and totally normal who got 100% extra time on his SAT's and as a result scores ridiculously high 2300+. These kids are candidates everywhere and honestly I could get over that if they simply showed colleges this fact my putting a little mark next to their score signifying they received extra time. Because in its current state, the system does not level the playing field, but rather distort it.</p>
<p>It ruins the whole standardized aspect of it. Does a person who's dyslexic really deserve a huge advantage over somebody that's a slow reader just because the dyslexic person's need for more time stems from something medical, when as a student they're functionally equivalent? </p>
<p>I think in some obtuse way this also favors the wealthier, since they're more likely to recognize a possible learning disability and work more to get it treated and medically diagnosed. The same student that would be diagnosed as dyslexic in a more affluent family/school district could very well just be considered slow/stupid in a less affluent family/school district.</p>
<p>My friend has cerebral palsy and gets extra time on tests. He got a 5 on the AB calc test and a 5 on both parts of Physics C. He has trouble holding a pen and writing (and he also has problems speaking). I don't feel like he has an extra advantage at all. He has to put up with a lot of crap at school and everything that seems easy to me is harder to him. </p>
<p>I may see your angle if there is a high incidence of dishonesty with the extra time, but I have never heard of such an occurrence. (However, few people in my town are wealthy enough to go to a doctor for an SAT or ACT or AP test.) However, the acts of a few wealthy cheaters should not cheapen the amazing feats of my friend.</p>
<p>Why do you care so much? Are you disappointed in your own test result and looking for a boogeyman to blame your poor score on?</p>
<p>SATs don't measure one's ability to succeed in college and life. However, they are a necessary part of the college admissions process. Why should someone who may not be able complete the SATs on time be held at a disadvantage?</p>
<p>having extra time doesn't help that much on the sat.</p>
<p>it does the act though.</p>
<p>I finished all the sat problems with time to spare.</p>
<p>Having extra time would've, at most, raised my sat score by 40, which isn't that big a deal.</p>
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Why should someone who may not be able complete the SATs on time be held at a disadvantage?
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<p>Thats the point if you are a slow reader/thinker or just not that smart, you may do poorly on the SATs and not finish the sections. Yet if you have a mental disability, all of a sudden you get 50-100% extra time. How is it fair that those kids with a mental handicap get extra time when dumber/slower kids cannot. I actually did very well on the SATS so this isn't about me, but simply a flaw in the system. In life people do not get extra time so why should they get it on a test that matters so much for college admissions.</p>
<p>jmanco49 is right. Your score on the SAT isn't going to change much if you get extra time, because the average high school student can read fast enough to get through the entire test under the time restrictions pretty easily. It's just a matter of reasoning, and if you dont get it, you dont get it. Extra time doesn't make you smarter. A score on the ACT however, could be greatly affected by a time increase. The reading section in particular is exceptionally easy, but hust very fast. Almost all answers in the ACT reading can be pulled directly from the text. Anyone who can read could easily get a perfect score on the reading section if they were just given enoughh time to read at their own pace. The whole ACT in general is kind of a joke in that it doesn't require one to comprehend or reason at any sort of higher level, but thats for another rant I guess. So, yeah. Who gives about the extra time on the SAT. It's not gonna help that much anyway and it's not like enough people get it to where it's actually gonna affect you.</p>
<p>Two anecdotes about extra time.
One is about a friend of my daughter's who may or may not have a legitimate learning disability. I just felt sorry for her on test day knowing how long she was going to be in there. I also suspect that the more time she had, the more likely she was to turn a right answer into wrong one. She is a kid with low energy to begin with. I'm sure she hit the wall well before 3 hours.
Another is a kid that kept wandering out of the test room (was he allowed more breaks or "move around " time? DK). He told his waiting parents that he did only a dozen problems because "they don't count it against you if you leave it blank". His parents didn't straighten him out. Probably as limited as he, in what ever way that is.</p>
<p>"Your score on the SAT isn't going to change much if you get extra time, because the average high school student can read fast enough to get through the entire test under the time restrictions pretty easily."</p>
<p>I become mildly dyslexic if I try and read too fast while taking standardized tests, which is why I missed two questions on the math section (I also tended to only miss two questions on a much more difficult high school math competition for the same reason). Two question on the math section is the difference between an 800 and something like a 740. It makes a difference.</p>
<p>When you're in college, all your tests are going to be under time limits.
You might as well get practice now. The test proctors at Penn or whatever aren't going to care about your "mild dyslexia;" they're going to make you take the test anyway. I don't become mildly dyslexic when I take tests, but that's life.</p>
<p>Seriously, so few people get extra time, and it doesn't affect their scores that much, so it's really not going to make a different in the big picture, which is whether or not you get accepted into the college you want to or not.</p>
<p>Seriously, don't waste your time complaining about it because even if you do extra time and you raise your score 40 points, it really won' t increase your odds of admission to the choice of your school very much.</p>
<p>I'm sorry that you missed 2 math questions, but that's life. not enough people have extra time for it to make any difference on whether or not you get into the college of your choice.</p>
<p>besides, if you really are that good at math, there are plenty of colleges that will accept you.</p>
<p>The writing section is by far the easiest for me.</p>
<p>"When you're in college, all your tests are going to be under time limits.
You might as well get practice now. The test proctors at Penn or whatever aren't going to care about your "mild dyslexia;" they're going to make you take the test anyway."</p>
<p>Not true at all.</p>
<p>If you go to the college/university disability office and get accommodations set up for you, you most certainly will get extra time, a note-taker, or whatever it is that you need. This is required under federal legislation.</p>
<p>So, for those of you who think you could really benefit from extra time, stroll on down to your guidance office and pester them until they screen you for dyslexia, ADHD, or whatever it is that you think might be wrong with you. Because, maybe you are right about it and the adults around you haven't been paying attention.</p>
<p>Just remember that your IEP and accommodations will not follow you to college if you don't take the lead in making sure that the documentation is in order and if you don't take the responsibility of visiting the disability office before you even start classes.</p>
<p>I was talking to the person who "becomes mildly dyslexic if I try and read too fast while taking standardized tests."</p>
<p>For her, colleges are not going to give her extra time. </p>
<p>Obviously, for people who actually have ADHD, they'll get extra time.</p>
<p>Bescraze:</p>
<p>You need to educate yourself about the different ways different people learn. Start with Googling "Gardner's Multiple Intelligences." Our educational system benefits those strong in verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical - instruction, assessment, awards and accolades are all set up to the benefit of the "smart" people to which you keep referring and feel are being cheated. It sounds as though you may be strong in these areas. (Well, maybe not the verbal-linguistic, after rereading some of your posts, and definitely not so much on the interpersonal intelligence as you appear weak on the ability to empathize.</p>
<p>The system we have is incredibly slanted toward those who are good at the traditional schooling - taking tests, writing papers, recalling and regurgitating, following step-by-step procedures -- pretty much the SAT. Those for whom this system is inconsistent with their particular intelligences and the ways in which they learn and the ways in which they can accurately be assessed have suffered through 13 years of frustration and disappointment and self-doubt. They get one little accommodation, a little more time on another of the endless standardized tests that have been used to torture them for as long as they can remember. Be a mensch - let them have their extra few minutes. </p>
<p>Check out this story: Bolger</a> overcomes dyslexia, earns 11 graduate degrees | University Relations</p>
<p>the problem is not with the people with mental or learning disabilties (or, to be PC, different abilites). The problem is that things like ADD are overdiagnosed. Just sit down, pay attention, and think. Most of those people do not have ADD, just a failure to concentrate for long periods of time. Everyone has ADD at times.</p>
<p>Wow, what an incredible amount of ignorance from the OP. People with certain learning disabilities have a legitimate need for extra time or other help. It depends on how the disability affects them. It helps level the playing field because they otherwise wouldn't be able to complete the test. </p>
<p>Unless you know what you're talking about, you should just be quiet.</p>
<p>And to Sophia...ADD can be overdiagnosed, but I have two family members with it and they had to go through a LOT of testing before they got the diagnosis. You don't just go to the doc and say, "I can't pay attention" and they say it's ADD. Everyone has moments of cluelessness but it is not even remotely close to ADD. ADD is pervasive and persistent and affects most aspects of a person's life. I live with it every day and it is very real.</p>
<p>I see what you mean by people "cheating the system" by getting extra time when in actuality they have no learning disability. However, that does NOT change the fact that there are others who really do need the extra time. The people who have learning disabilities are not at an advantage by getting extra time, they really do need it. If someone cheats the system like you said, and I'm sure many do, there is nothing you can do about it. That's life and you have to learn to live with it. And the comment about "dumb/slow reading" high schoolers with no learning disability, well that's their problem. They can work and try to fix it, but without a legitimate learning disability there is no reason to give them extra time.</p>
<p>jmanco49 - </p>
<p>I was writing for the "mildly dyslexic" also. The problem is that "mildly dyslexic" in high school has an unfortunate way of turning into "wildly dyslexic" in college. Recognizing the situations in which you become "dyslexic" can be the first step in developing a system of accommodations that will allow you to perform at your best. I know a person whose dyslexia was not identified until half-way through a Ph.D. program, so I fully understand how some people are capable of compensating on their own for a learning disability. The thing is, you shouldn't have to.</p>
<p>While you are in high school and still have easy access to a whole team of school counselors, school psychologists, and the like, if you have any suspicion at all that you have some learning disability, you should push to get it identified and to get the help that you need if it is identified. It will be harder to do this once you are in college.</p>
<p>Wishing all of you all the very best in your college searches.</p>