I just took the january SAT and I’m sure my result will be lower than my expectation. So am planning to take the March redesigned SAT. My question is, do i need to purchase the new blue book or should i just use the materials I found online and my previous bb?
All the practice tests in the new Official Guide are available for free online (Khan Academy or the CB site).
I wish there were more of them than just four. I don’t feel that flooding the market SAT publications from a multitude of companies and authors emulate the new SAT reliably (Erica Meltzer’s Grammar, probably, the only exception).
@Plotinus has started a couple of threads on what other prep materials could be used, but so far none have been suggested.
What’s students to do?
@gcf101 Right now I think the best thing Class of 2017 students can do is to prepare very well for the ACT, take the ACT, and use the new SAT as Plan B. The two tests are closer now so the ACT prep will be more helpful for the SAT than it was in the past. Do some of the ACT math practice without a calculator. Double or triple-up with the more challenging ACT reading passages to make the ACT reading section longer and harder.
If you do decide to take the new SAT, use the official practice material released by College Board and the two October PSAT’s if you can get your hands on them. All the aftermarket practice questions I have seen (including Khan Academy’s) are pretty bad. I don’t have Meltzer’s book. Does it have many practice questions?
Maybe for Class of 2018 there will be a sufficient amount of official material available. The test is easier now so probably most strong students will require less and possibly much less preparation. The SAT is going to be given also in April in schools participating in SAT School Day – take it for free in April if you can and forget about the March and May test dates.
@Plotinus Meltzer’s Grammar book does have a decent number of drills, but not enough for an adequate prep. That’s where the ACT comes to the rescue: its English part is nearly identical with the rSAT writing section - or vice-versa.
@gcf101 I think the ACT English is much closer than to the SAT Writing/Language than it was, but I would not go so far as to term them “nearly identical”. The lexical complexity of the SAT is still greater.
For example, on PSAT, we have:
"[1] In the early 1990s, much was made of the so-called Mozart effect, whereby listening to Mozart’s music for ten minutes boosted a person’s spatial intelligence.[2] The effect, however, 1 CAME UP SHORT, lasting for only about ten to fifteen minutes after the listening period. "
1.
• A. NO CHANGE
• B. was a flash in the pan,
• C. proved temporary,
• D. had a short shelf life,
For someone who knows the idioms, the question is easy. However, many of my students probably do not know what “a flash in the pan” is, much less that “a flash in the pan” is a poor collocation for a psychological effect. Some students might not even know what “shelf life” is. I haven’t seen so many relatively arcane idioms on the ACT.
To follow up on some of the remaining differences between the ACT and the SAT, and to illustrate a couple of things I’m not happy about on the new SAT, let me give a specific example.
I would like to compare a question from Calculator section of the redesigned PSAT on the one side, to a math question from the ACT on the other.
To respect the copyrights, I will not reproduce the actual questions here, but invent similar questions with different numbers.
The official PSAT question has the general form:
3x + 4y = -6
2y - x = 12
What is the value of x?
(grid-in answer)
The ACT has the general form:
5x+3y=11
3x+2y=17
What is the value of x+y?
(multiple choice)
Do you think these are the same? No, they are not. Here are two very important differences:
- The PSAT question has the second equation written in a non-standard form: 2y-x=12. A zillion kids are going to misread this equation as 2x-y=-12 and get the answer wrong. Oops. Bye-bye Harvard.
The old SAT had plenty of dumb traps too. But I thought CB was going to clean that up and test the most important skills for college. I don’t think noticing that the equation is written unconventionally as 2y-x instead of as 2x-y is one of the most important skills for college, especially for math majors.
Or is this something that is supposed to make the test more girl-friendly, because girls notice things like that?
- A second difference is that the PSAT question occurs in the calculator section. CAS calculators (algebra calculators) are allowed on the PSAT and SAT, whereas they are not allowed on the ACT.
Perhaps some people reading this comment do not understand what a CAS can do. Let me explain.
Suppose you are running out of time. Or suppose you haven’t the slightest idea of how to work out the problem manually. Here is what you do:
You type on the calculator:
solve(3x + 4y = -6 and 2y - x = 12, x,y) ENTER
In a very small fraction of a second, the calculator will return the correct values for x and y.
Your admission to Harvard is saved.
At least on the ACT, you are not allowed to use a CAS calculator, so you have to do some algebra (or be a lucky guesser).
What exactly is being tested by the PSAT with this question? 9th grade algebra? No. That is being tested by the ACT question. The PSAT question is testing 9th grade algebra plus good proof-reading skills, or maybe just possession of a CAS calculator and good data-entry skills.
While reading the question carefully is important, however as a math major, I can attest to that. IMO, a good problem shouldn’t throw down annoying traps like that.
Any idea why the CB hasn’t cracked down on CAS calculators yet?
“Any idea why the CB hasn’t cracked down on CAS calculators yet?”
Maybe to give students with CAS calculators a reason to prefer the SAT to the ACT…
@Plotinus
HAHA true… I have a ti 89 and for the ACT I have to use another calculator…
And I haven’t used non-cas graphing calculators in my life so it will be fun.
@YoLolololol
I loved my TI89 but I haven’t touched it for years since I got a TI-Nspire CX CAS. I also have an old TI-84 I use regularly for ACT/IB. But my favorite is my pencil. I liked the SAT better when all the numbers were fudged and calculators superfluous.
I love my TI89 but some of my friends have NSPIRE CAS…
What makes you prefer the nspire over ti89?
@Yololololol haha, just a few years ago I had an original TI-NSpire (non-CAS) and my classmates already thought that was advanced (most of them had TI-83’s or TI-84’s). I used it for the SAT/subject tests and ACT. We’ve definitely come a long way since slide rules…
@MITer94
yeah i love ti 89…
I’m taking BC Calc right now and while my friends are graphing functions and trying to find the zeroes,
I simply use solve () and get the answer in 10 seconds. XD
@Yololololol the non-CAS NSpire has a solve(…) command and I’m pretty sure 83 and 84 do as well.
However I can’t compute indefinite integrals…oh well, Wolfram Mathematica. Or better yet, try to integrate by hand.
@MITer94
haha we couldn’t use our calculator for the indefinite integrals test (for obvious reasons)…
but on the calculator permitted section of the test, it is so much more advantageous to have a calculator with CAS imo.
and btw 83 and 84 do not have a solve() command.
“What makes you prefer the nspire over ti89?”
There must be around 50 things so I can’t list them all here. Many of these things are more important for my students than they are for me, but they make life easier for me too.
- The graphing screen is in color and has much higher resolution. My eyes are not so young and I have trouble seeing the 89’s dim screen.
- There a key for every letter of the alphabet so you can enter all those funny SAT problems without substituting any variable names.
- There are menus and templates for almost everything, so you don’t have to remember or enter commands. There are also calculus templates – you just fill in the numbers or variables and press enter.
I especially like the fraction template – no more parentheses problems. I would like a dime for every time a student got a problem wrong because parentheses were missing. - On the graphing page, you can enter relations without any modification (e.g., circles). There are equation templates so you don’t even have to know the standard form of the equation of anything.
- The curves on the graphing page are in different colors.
- There is a great dynamic geometry feature with sliders. This is not so useful for the SAT, but it is great for some Math Level 2 problems. You can just guess the answer by constructing the figure on the screen and varying the relevant parameter until the graph looks right.
Ok, that said, you can probably do the same math with the TI-89. It just is a lot more convenient with the Nspire. It also seems to compute much faster.
I still like my pencil best.
@Plotinus (Post #5).
I have to backpedal and admit that the rSAT Writing and Language passages are of a higher level of complexity than the passages in the ACT English test.
Nevertheless, considering the scarcity of well developed rSAT prep materials, the ACT English passages are second best to the authentic CB stuff in terms of practice. Actually, ACT passages/questions may even be of a higher quality in light of the possibility that the College Board is in a rush to produce in-house baked goods.
As for the idioms, the only way to acquire them is not through studying or practicing - massive reading is the process that leads to their natural absorption and mastery.
At the same time, it’s not unlikely that some SAT idioms based questions can be cracked without knowing specific idioms.
What needs to be in place of “CAME UP SHORT” is explained in the context by the following “lasting for only about ten to fifteen minutes after […]”.
'Flash in the pan" is probably too fast; “The effect” and 'had a short shelf life" don’t meld;“proved temporary” fits so well that whatever the meaning of “CAME UP SHORT” is, (C) is too good of an answer not to select.
ETA. An afterthought: some students may not know the meaning of “something/body proved [to be] …”.
Even then, “temporary” looks like a matching piece of a puzzle.
@gcf101 I agree that students who are good at grasping meanings from the context will be able to guess the right answer even if they never heard “flash in the pan” before. This ability is the sign of a strong reader and was always very helpful on the SAT. Then some people just have incredible intuition for the meanings of words. I know people who could get the analogies right without even knowing the meanings of the words because they could “feel” it. Words have roots, cognates, associations. Language is a funny thing. Math is funny too. People with very good numerical intuition can often guess the right answer choice by estimation, especially if the choices are spread out. That’s how multiple choice tests are.
However, I think weaker readers will have trouble with the unknown idioms and the overall higher lexical complexity of the passages. Even if in the end they come up with the right answer, they probably will lose time puzzling things over. I have several students whose first language is not English. They do better with grammar rules than with idioms. They are going to sweat.