I’ve just finished registering for the June SAT Subjects Test. After getting the admission ticket, I noticed that rulers and mechanical pencils aren’t allowed. OK, what? How am I suppose to graph a function without a ruler and a graphing calculator? And didn’t someone here said that he/she used a mechanical pencil in the SAT writing section? The admission ticket says that they’re banned from the TEST ROOM. And what do the people at the College Board have against mechanical pencils? They’re perfectly reasonable writing tools. I honestly can’t see how people can cheat with mechanical pencils.
Sorry, I need to vent.
Now that that’s out of the way, I’ve got a few questions about the score report. If the admission cycle of Univeristy A doesn’t start until September and I choose to send my June test scores to University A during my registration, will University A receive my scores in June or in September? Like, does choosing University A as the recipient mean that my score will immediately get sent to it or that my score is available for Univerity A to peruse at its pleasure comes September?
It’s not a question of cheating but of scoring. If your lead isn’t #2 then you’re getting a zero because the machine can’t read it.
I don’t know why on earth you’d need a ruler. You don’t have time to be so fussy about straight lines anyway.
@bodangles So if I use a #2 mechanical pencil, it’s still going to be OK? I have no idea about the SAT but I took the IELTS with mechanical pencils before and the machine can read the answers just fine. However, British Council doesn’t ban mechanical pencils from the test room like the College Board does, so I’m afraid that they’ll take my mechanical pencils away if I take them to the test center.
About the rulers, it’s not matter of straight line. It’s the matter of precision, especially in the cases with large numbers. For example, with point (1, 1), I can gauge by eyes where its position on the (Oxy) plane will be. However, with point, say, (5, 7), I simply can’t do it because my 5 is about the same as my 6 and 7. Worse still, there are cases when you must graph the damn things to answer the question. Like when they give you three vertices of a parallelogram and ask you which of A, B, C, D, E is the 4th vertix, frankly, the fastest way to solve the problem is to draw the vertices out with precision, or the parallelogram will turn into some kind of monstrous complex quadrilateral.
Ye-e-es, as far as I know…but still, I’d adhere to the rules. You don’t know how strict your proctor is going to be.
I forget which one of the components of IQ that relates to, but I know it does. Spatial-something-or-other?
Can I recommend getting out a piece of paper and practice the freehand drawing of straight lines with evenly spaced hash marks on them?
@bodangles I don’t know either, so maybe I’ll bring both to the SAT for essay writing just in case.
@JustOneDad Good point. Hopefully, 2 months will be enough. It’ll be infinitely harder without a ruler though.
Thank you both for your replies. Also, does anyone know anything about the score reports?