<p>I don’t really think there’s any bias here. I’m a girl, and I don’t leave any blank (nor do I guess, although of course there are always some that I’m not 100% certain of, but it’s not a guess.) Any individual female is just as capable of guessing on any question as a male is, and if they don’t, I don’t think that’s indicative of a bias on the test’s part. If women had higher scores than men, on average, nobody would care. But I also don’t think men having higher SAT scores is indicative of any overall intellectual superiority.</p>
<p>i guess we are smarter than boys!!!</p>
<p>^Nope, not true. I think that if men guess more, they take it the smarter way. Assuming you can eliminate one answer choice, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting a question right, which means you will have 1 point in 4 questions. you will lose .75 points from your wrong answers, which leaves you with a total of 0.25 points. If you had not guessed on those questions, you would have 0 points. Therefore, statistically speaking, guessing is more to your advantage if you can eliminate an answer choice. From this, we can assume that men are smarter than women. JK :)</p>
<p>The entire concept of the SAT and ACT is biased. Those who live in families with $3,000,000 incomes are inevitably going to score exceptionally due to their expensive tutoring. The SAT is largely about your ability to take tests, not necessarily raw intelligence. In order to score well, you must be familiar with the collegeboard’s approach to testing you. Therefore it is those who come from the rich families whose parents have had 10 different tutors offer their insight into the questions and approaches to the SAT that will score high. I realize this is much of an exaggeration but generally speaking, the SAT & ACT are more a measure of one’s family income. The SAT books provided in various stores offer some help but those with strong financial states are placed at an unfair advantage.</p>
<p>I am a female and I answer all of the questions and leave in very VERY rare cases when I honestly have absolutely no idea what is the question all about. </p>
<p>If I leave some questions out, I always get a lower score.</p>
<p>kmarie1995, I don’t agree with you. I would have agreed 7 months ago when I had no idea what SAT is. After half year of preparing for it now I see that the test is not all that hard. You just have to invest some time on quality reading, enhancing your vocabulary and getting all the basic rules of math that are tested on SAT. All you need is to book College Board online course and get both Blue books. All that costs around 100 dollars. Then you read College Board lessons and do all the practice. Make sure you understand every single question and notice all the patterns. That’s all.
I agree that a tutor can give all the insight faster than you start noticing the patterns… but still it is you who has to understand everything and score. All it takes is a little dedication. If you really want to, you can prepare yourself with little cost.</p>
<p>^ You’re right, the test isn’t that hard. Therefore, you shouldn’t worry about CR workbooks (your last thread on here)</p>
<p>But yeah, people with much more money sometimes have children who don’t feel as motivated because college expenses and scholarships aren’t so important. Therefore, more wealthy people may not try harder on the SAT too. Of course, it depends on the student’s motivation.</p>
<p>I can’t believe it took this long for someone to mention that the bias guessing provides is not a based on gender but on test taking strategy. (thank you *NemesisNyx) This is definitely just a case of looking for something to complain about.</p>
<p>The bias the guessing penalty creates is against people with bad testing strategies. Duh, it’s a test, that’s what it’s supposed to do (and, yes, test taking strategies are derived from logical approaches to the questions, so represent intelligence). If female test takers use bad strategies, then that sucks for them.</p>
<p>There is no unbreakable rule stating that female test takers will refuse to guess (I’m one of them and very rarely leave a question blank if I have the time to read it), so if a female student and a male student of similar “intelligence” both take the same approach into the test, they will receive the same (statistically) score.</p>
<p>It gives the advantage to people who do better on the test. That’s all there is to it.</p>
<p>This is not true for me. I’m a female and I prefer guessing. When someone ask me a question and I don’t know or not sure the answer, I rather guess or speak out my opinion than just simply say I don’t know.</p>
<p>I hate when people single out standardized tests for being biased towards those with more wealth and education and then say they’re not accurate measures of intelligence because of that. They’re not supposed to measure intelligence, though they do have a strong correlation with it, and IQ tests - long esteemed as the ultimate measures of intelligence - are arguably also biased in the same way.</p>
<p>its simple. as a guy, i know that guys are very partial to a risk/reward strategy, much more than most women. Therefore, more guessing. Simple, its just genes. Sometimes this works in our favor, sometimes not. On this test, however, it does.<br>
Women should take up the guessing path-blindly guessing gives you a 1 in 5 chance, therefore, on 5 questions (theoretically), one answer would be right +1, and 4 answers would be wrong, 4*-.25. It comes out even blindly guessing, and usually eliminating at least one answer choice on the SAT is easy, so, start guessing, ladies</p>