<p>Granted, but practice for the SAT leads to the mastery of the skills necessary to do well on the SAT. Then, one takes the SAT, gets tested on those skills, gets a good score, and then one’s SAT score adequately reflects what it is supposed to - how one has mastered certain skills necessary to be able to succeed/survive in any university. So, while your argument may be correct, it does not necessarily lead to any flaw in the usage of one’s SAT score.</p>
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<p>On the contrary, I hope everyone speaks like him. He speaks rather eloquently, and I’m always eager to read his posts as they usually are interesting and insightful. As well, they help me expand my horrific vocabulary (English as a second language can be tough at times lol).</p>
<p>Hmm… No, because there are multiple factors determining someone’s score. You could have been ill, no opportunity to study etc. And all scores >650 differ only by a couple mistakes. Is there so much difference between 56/60 or 52/60? </p>
<p>Furthermore, I think a lot of international students who don’t speak english as their first language will have lower scores on the CR and WR parts of the test.</p>
<p>@fledgling - I think it can be improved by changing its writing section. (granted, my scores bias me against it). However, the subjective evaluation of an essay counts for 250 points in the grade. I’m a hell of a writer when I write, but I can’t do the SAT and ACT essays, or at least in the formulaic way the graders want. (two 7s and an 8). An MIT study showed that a professor could predict an essay’s score without reading a word, and simply looking at the essay’s length. His predictions were right 90% of the time. The MC subscore is a fairer way to judge tests.</p>
<p>The math section should test actual math. I’m an excellent math student, but I always miss questions on the SAT math ) whereas the ACT tests actual math you’ve learned in school. (and I did better on the ACT Math - bias). The SAT Subject Tests can evaluate math ability as well. I don’t feel that I should have to read through a page of awkwardly worded questions and pick which equation fits the problem. That’s for reading comprehension, not math.</p>
<p>Finally, the curve. Change it to raw score only, and try to make the tests as similar as possible in difficulty. I’ve missed four questions in both of my SAT tests in the math section. A 730 and a 710. We might imagine a 30 point difference in the curves for each section. I might miss three questions on a section and score a 740, and someone else might score a 770 with the same raw score. Multiply it by the sections, and you’ve got a 2220 v. a 2310. Which looks more impressive on paper?</p>
<p>I agree with Ancalagon4554’s post above. The essay is not a truly rigorous measure of one’s writing ability. SAT essay graders have approximately one minute to read, reflect, and grade an essay before they must move onto the next. I do appreciate the College Board’s objective to institute the essay given the importance of writing as an academic skill, but its present method of evaluation is far from perfect.</p>
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<p>I don’t attend Yale. I am currently in high school.</p>
^Just being objective here—I don’t think they thought that you were a student at Yale, I’m pretty sure they meant that they hope that at Yale, no one speaks in the same way as you do.
I don’t mind the way to express yourself :]</p>
<p>The SAT will never be abolished because it is necessary to standardize the selection process. Grade inflation is rampant throughout public schools, and one student may achieve a 4.0 at your average public school but would only obtain a 3.5 at a private. The disparity is even evident within my own school. The average grade in one physics class is an A while the other physics class has only one student receiving an A-. Also, the SAT math is much more practical and applicable to every day life then say, Calculus. Any competent math student with decent reasoning skills should be able to score highly without too much preparation. If I was on an admissions committee, I’d take the kid with the 2200 and 3.6 over the valedictorian with a 2000.</p>
<p>Then you would probably be foregoing the better student. Studies have shown that GPA is the best predictor of college academic performance. A low GPA with a high SAT score implies that the student is lazy, unmotivated or for some other reason not performing to his potential.</p>
<p>A low GPA coupled with a high SAT score can actually be rather indicative of how one will perform in college/how one treats one’s academics (unless the low GPA is so low because of poor freshmen/sophomore year grades while having an upward trend for junior/senior year). A SAT score is the result of how one did on a test on a Saturday morning, and if one is reasonably intelligent, one can easily get a 2000+ on the SAT, but one’s GPA is the result of four years of necessary work. A low GPA with a 2000+ SAT-level intelligence indicates that one is rather lazy and therefore, regardless of how intelligent one is, will not be able to thrive at a university or add anything academically to the student body (barring one having extraordinary talents in one or more academic fields) due to the fact that s/he will be surrounded by other people that are as intelligent as him/her, but actually have the work ethic to do well (assuming the college consists mostly of students with high GPA’s + high SAT’s…let’s just say it’s Yale :)), leading that student to not be eaten alive in terms of academics. I just hope Yale doesn’t think this about me >___>.</p>
<p>@mifune: The essay is actually the part that, in my opinion, can be most indicative of a student’s critical thinking abilities. Granted, the score given to the essay by collegeboard isn’t representative of anything much, but the essay itself can actually show how a student thinks under time constraints and pressure (and without excessive editing by peers/teachers/parents…as seen in most people’s college essays) and what type of work s/he would be able to produce in timed essays s/he will have to do in various courses once s/he is attending a university.</p>
<p>@motion12345: I fully agree with your personal beliefs regarding the essay. I firmly respect the College Board’s initiative to institute the free response portion, but I do not feel that it is adequately assessed. The multiple choice subscore is a more representative measure of one’s intuitive knowledge of grammatical and syntactical conventions. But I do feel that a university has the right to view an SAT essay since it demonstrates an individual’s ability to piece together an argument within a limited timeframe.</p>
<p>I don’t think there should be any minimum threshold for the SAT, but the goal of the SAT is to measure competence. It’s politically correct to say that everyone can do anything if they try hard enough, but its not true. I know that no matter how hard I try, I will never be as good as Usain Bolt. You can study for the SAT, but really, doing so only makes you a better student. And some people don’t even need to study because they are already competent. The reason I emphasize competence is because schools don’t want to take in someone who can’t handle the curriculum. Likewise, that’s why they also consider GPA, because between a student who can handle the curriculum but needs to work hard to do it will beat the gifted student who doesn’t put any work in.</p>
<p>Also, I believe that the SAT works to properly train students to focus on broad academic aptitudes that are highly valued in academia and beyond. Moreover, the SAT does show a linear correlation between performance and success in one’s career (if someone would like me to search for a link I can). However, that is not to say that the SAT accommodates the full range of mental abilities. Music and art, for instance, do not lend themselves to representative emulation on standardized tests and thus it is nearly impossible to assess these capabilities. But I will defend it as one of the best modern instruments of academic aptitude that colleges have at their disposal.</p>
<p>The SAT is simply not an accurate measure of collegiate success. One could study for the SAT so much that it becomes second nature and get 2300+. For those of us who would rather not devote their lives to something so superficial, it is a disadvantage because it is not a test that measures natural academic talent. GPA>SAT.</p>
<p>How so? The SAT tests math, reading and writing. I would call those “basic” academic aptitudes. Are you saying that high school students wouldn’t study those subjects if the SAT were not “properly” driving them to do so? That is silly. Those are basic academic subjects that are required and taught from kindergarten through high school.</p>
<p>Aside from interest in a particular subject, what usually drives high school students to choose a broad range of study is 1) State high school graduation requirements; 2) the minimum requirements for admission to State colleges; and 3) the requirements the students perceive are needed for admission to their target college. Not the SAT.</p>
<p>Exactly. They are basic. If you lack those skills, imagine how difficult it would be to become an english major if you only scored 500 on the critical reading. The SAT tests your ability to do basic skills that are necessary in order to do college level work. Basically it is used to weeds students out and determine how difficult one’s curriculum is. The SAT must be used in conjunction with GPA in order to give an accurate profile of the student though, because even with a high aptitude to college level work, it won’t matter if you don’t do it. That’s why a college will choose a student who gets a somewhat lower SAT score and a higher GPA over one who score a higher SAT, because the first student can still handle the workload and will also be successful as well (being highly intelligent can’t write an english paper for you). The following is a good article that explains my thoughts in detail.
[Why</a> America Needs the SAT](<a href=“http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/satlogic.htm]Why”>http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/satlogic.htm)</p>
<p>Many of you say that not anyone can score a 2300+ on the SAT, no matter how much practice that person gets. True, but I think that anyone with 2100+ SAT scores and a solid GPA can get a 2300+ with a lot of studying.</p>
(English as a second language can be tough at times lol).</p>