Hey guys,
Saw @JuicyMango’s in the December SAT thread about CB cracking down on this month’s doc and wanted to address the issue of discussing answers.
Whether or not they are sending out emails to the people in the doc isn’t really important. Can CB cancel your score if they catch you? Yes! Will it happen? Probably not.
So no one is really going to stop you from discussing. But there are plenty of reasons why doing so really does you no good
I think the main reason why people discuss answers is to see how many questions they got wrong and maybe approximate their score. That’s a fairly legitimate reason and I used to do that a lot on school exams and such. But if you think about it, doing so only hurts yourself.
Lets say a bunch of people are saying X answer is right and you think you put Y answer.
There are a number of questions I have for you.
- Are these sources trustworthy?
- Are you sure you in fact did put Y answer?
- Are you sure there were no nuances in the actual question.
The answer to question 1 is mostly not. The majority of these people are just first time posters with zero credibility-your average Joe- who are biased like crazy because they want to be right. Their often illogical arguments mixed in with your own self doubt will convince you that you got an answer wrong and you will be sad and despondent when in reality you shouldn’t. If they are right, you will be sad and despondent as well. More on feelings down below.
Now lets talk about the second and third question. It has been extensively proven that human memory is kind of like a telephone game. So can you really answer those two questions with any real certainty? If not, there really isn’t much point in looking or asking is there? You are depending on the memory of teenagers. Just think about it. Can you remember word for word the essay prompt, a line you probably read a few times over? Is it possible that some can? Yes. Is it possible that everyone commenting in that thread can? No. Every single word in the CR, WR, and math section is significant and meaning and just one twist of the words can change the answer based on their account of the question. For example, there were numerous people who misquoted the “sinuous” question in the October administration all because one poster most likely convinced them that they had remembered incorrectly and so an error was found despite it not existing. Stuff like this happens frequently in cr and wr questions so you can’t really trust anyone.
My final question is this:
What happens when the scores come out?
There are two cases
- You get a score you are happy with.
- You get a score you are not happy with.
If the first happens to you and you had compared answers, you felt unnecessary sadness/grief/guilt (Not good!).
If the second happens to you and you had compared answers, you will feel sadness/grief/guilt another time(Not good either!).
If you think you did not do as well, I would suggest you spend the time you would have wasted furiously refreshing and hoping for someone to support your answer studying for the next test and keeping your spirits high.
By wallowing in self pity, you essentially lock yourself from truly applying yourself when you are supposed to be studying for at least a week.
We can clearly see that checking answers, unless you think you got everything right (unlikely because there are so many dissenting opinions) is both a waste of time and emotion.
I hope you guys stop to think about what you are doing and avoid the path I took. I remember crying about missing that one math question and thinking I missed ~4 cr questions and 1 wr question. Did I really have to do that? Do you really want to go through that?
Thus we can conclude that knowledge is a burden rather than a benefit.
Please grade my essay on “Can knowledge be a burden rather than a benefit?”
just kidding. 