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That is why I think the SAT's are imortant. They might not reveal much about an individual's work ethic but they do give a fairly accurate assessment of a student's intelligence and ability to perform in later years, since the SAT's are not something you can study for specifically.
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They all just test students' knowledge of basic and broad concepts in various subject areas
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<p>That isnt true at all. The best way to beat the SATs is to study for them specifically. You have to learn to pace yourself and to take the time to get acquainted with the kind of questions that come up in them (I don't know about the new SAT but the old one was very repetitive, not in terms of actual questions but in the type of questions that were asked and SAT II Writing was pretty much the same story) Techniques like plugging in the answer choices before actually trying to solve a sum have nothing to do with your comprehension of the subject- in SAT Math, you can get away with not actually working out quite a few problems. I don't see where a useful application of the Math you've learnt in HS comes into the picture in that kind of search and replace problem. </p>
<p>Then again, the SAT verbal is very tough and you have to gear yourself specifically for it. How often do you across words like parsimonious, egregious and temporizing in a typical English class at school? (I'm discounting the fact that you are a fanatic reader. From what I can see, there arent too many of those arond. CC is not representative of the general population) You have to study for SAT verbal with very specific targets in mind. </p>
<p>I'll confess that Writing wasnt really like this. Writing more or less came up with the same kind of questions that an English Language exam in my school would have. Despite this, a lot of people from my school didnt get phenomenally high scores even though they do fairly decently at school, with the same kind of questions. So I can't sat that these people didnt know how to extend their prior knowledge to apply to slightly different situations because the situations were pretty much identical in terms of content. I think that being a bad test taker is a plausible explanantion for these apparent anomalies.</p>
<p>To look at the matter from a slightly different angle, let me use my situation as an example. I don't have a glowing HS transcript or a pristine GPA. My average grades do have something to do with the fact that I don't always feel like putting in regular work and effort but they also are partly due to the fact that I am just not very good at some subjects, including Math. Nevertheless, I am a very good standardized test taker and I get high scores without exerting myself over the content of the test to the extent that I would while studying for a school test. This is mainly because I concentrate on technique rather than content and it has worked every single time for me and as far as I can see, its mainly a matter of being able to pick out relevant data from a question as fast as possible and find a way to get to the answer without actually trying to do it in a systematic way.</p>
<p>But there are several people who are more intelligent than me, who write better and have a firmer grounding in Mathematical concepts than I do (and I am not saying this because the have 4.0 GPAs) and yet have scores which are a lot worse than mine. I don't know how to explain that apart from the fact that they are intimidated by the SAT and dont really know the techniques which help to make it easier, mainly because they are sincere people, who unlike me, do not perpetually look for shortcuts to make their work easier :p.</p>
<p>The SATs dont do a good job of testing either intelligence nor knowledge. They do however do a very good job of testing just how well you're able to take them</p>