<p>"And I don't really buy the line about "bad test takers" or "just one day". Very few people show significant variation on their tests scores"</p>
<p>As mine is one of those bad test takers (440M, 470V, 480W, 8 essay on a particularly bad day and a 28 ACT on a not bad day), the focus on testing does concern me, but I do understand that everyone needs to have some comparable criteria. My only question is whether the SAT really needs to test physical endurance, as well. Couldn't a quarter of each section be lopped off and still be valid? Do the colleges really need to know how kids handle hunger, thirst and needing to go to the bathroom?</p>
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There is actually Algebra II on the new SAT Math. There are kids I know who are not finished with their Algebra II coursework, and were put in the position of having to take the SAT junior year without finishing out their Algebra II.
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<li>Why do they have to take the SAT junior year?</li>
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Now the utopian idea that we will fix schools this way is great. I just happen not to be a big believer in utopian ideas. What if it doesn't work out as planned? What if all the poorer districts are not able to get it together?
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<p>C'mon. Not all colleges are expecting applicants to score 2400. So if they're not prepared for the most selective ones, why should they even apply there? Should remedial math be offered at HYPSM for kids who did not get through Algebra II?</p>
<p>I agree about the abominable length of the new SAT. College final exams usually last 3 hours. You are allowed to go on bathroom break after the first 90 minutes. I can't remember whether you can go again afterward or not. But late students may not take the exam after the first 90 minutes so there may be connection between these two policies.</p>
<p>What happened to your D is a disgrace and should be reported.</p>
<p>I also think the constant switching between sections is needlessly distracting and tension-inducing.</p>
<p>Why do they have to take the SAT junior year?</p>
<p>Um, maybe they'd like a shot at a selective school EA or ED?</p>
<p>"If they're not prepared for the most selective ones why should they even apply there?" ???</p>
<p>Why do they even have to apply there? Again, not all schools offer Algebra 2 before junior year and/or not all parents see to it their kids are in more advanced classes. If they have potential, why shouldn't they apply? Of course, now their potential may be masked by the new SAT.</p>
<p>Again, I have no personal stake in this discussion. My s is done with alg I, alg, II, and geo and will be in pre-calc/trig next year (10th). I'm assuming he'll be okay with the new SAT math.</p>
<p>"Couldn't a quarter of each section be lopped off and still be valid? Do the colleges really need to know how kids handle hunger, thirst and needing to go to the bathroom? "</p>
<p>YES!!!!!!!!! I don't understand why this test has to be so long. I also agree with marite about the section switch. S hated having to "switch gears" all the time. He was much more comfortable( and did much better) on SAT Subjects where there was 50 min of concentrating on one thing then 50 min of another( he took two) . Also SAT Subjects can be taken one at a time, so people who have trouble concentrating hard for hours on end are not at a disadvantage. My ideal standartized test( we do need them, I understand that) would follow SAT 2 format with more options available( different levels of math, and so on) .</p>
<p>I doubt that a student who has not finished Algebra II at the end of junior year is prepared for the most selective schools. But I do not want to stand in the way of people throwing away their application fees.</p>
<p>There's potential and there's the actuality of being college-ready.
Saying that students have the potential of being ready for the most selective colleges with only algebra II is akin to saying that women in a certain age range are all pre-pregnant. They may have the <em>potential</em> of being pregnant, but only some are, and only those will have babies. So there may be lot </p>
<p>Your son should be okay with the new SAT if he takes it at the end of junior year or at the beginning of senior year. He is one year ahead of the normal--and I stress normal--schedule. Students who have not completed Algebra II are behind the schedule. We can explain why. But it does not make the lack of preparation disappear.</p>
<p>Normal around my neck of the woods is NOT Algebra I in 8th grade. I guess it's a regional thing. Or prep school vs. public. Or something like that. </p>
<p>What is "the schedule" you are referring to, btw?</p>
<p>I also have a personal bias that not all people need advanced math to succeed in college or in life. My husband has the opposite bias. Go figure.</p>
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Normal around my neck of the woods is NOT Algebra I in 8th grade. I guess it's a regional thing. Or prep school vs. public. Or something like that.
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<p>It'srequired in my public k-12 school system and is increasingly required in many districts throughout the country. Even when it was not required, the better students went into Algebra II in 9th grade. The fact remains, though, whatever the explanation may be for lack of trig in 11th grade, not every student should be considering applying to the most elite schools.</p>
<p>In the story linked below, the student's SAT scores are not revealed. But I would bet they are adequate. They may or not may be spectacular--I would not know--, but they are adequate. Which means that he was adequately prepared when he took the new SAT. And he will be going to Harvard. I'll bet that Harvard took into account the type of school he attended as well as his family background.</p>
<p>We were fortunate not to encounter the new SAT 1, but I wonder if my kids would have had problems with it. As I've said earlier, they both did very good on the old SAT 1--my S got a 760 on the math. However, when he took the math SAT 2, IIC, he got a 640--fortieth percentile. On the IC, he managed a 720, better, but not so great. Math instruction is just not so wonderful at our hs. but Marite, you know where he's going to school, and he's doing fine.</p>
<p>And the writing? Not to beat a dead horse that I've ground my teeth over before (to mix some metaphors), but the 6 my D got on the SAT 2 was obviously, well, just plain wrong (I'll be l glad to re-explain why to anyone who cares about the whole sorry story.) suffice to say, Phi Betta Kappa from a top ten LAC, much kudos for her writing.</p>
<p>So, while I am a big fan of the SAT for rescuing kids from subpar high schools, I gotta agree with HH, that the new version seems to be stacked against them. Sure glad we didn't have to face it here.</p>
<p>As I've said, the essay on the new SAT is in a state of flux. Some colleges refuse to consider it for this reason. I am not championing it for this very reason at this point. BUT: colleges would not be asking for it if they did not distrust the college application essays and had not experienced the lack of writing skills of so many of their students even at the top colleges where the admitted students scored higher than average on the SAT.</p>
<p>As for your son's score on the math, it shows that he had an adequate curriculum and is probably not a math person. Nothing wrong with that--I'm not one, either. And the college duly took that into account.</p>
<p>I'm not over the moon about my son's SAT II scores, yet I feel that they fairly accurately reflect him. Same for the SATs. They show him to be stronger verbally than mathematically -- true. They show him to be pretty strong in Latin, less so in US Hist -- again, true. They have some diagnostic value, so I wouldn't chuck them altogether. But I would hope that they're just one piece of a very large puzzle. My son, for example, hates multiple choice questions with almost a religious fervor -- he much prefers short answers and essays. So his standardized test scores may not always perfectly equate with what he knows -- but they're close enough to give colleges some idea about him when taken together with the rest of his information.</p>
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So his standardized test scores may not always perfectly equate with what he knows -- but they're close enough to give colleges some idea about him when taken together with the rest of his information. [my italics]
<p>"We were fortunate not to encounter the new SAT 1, but I wonder if my kids would have had problems with it."</p>
<p>Unlike many - I don't think they are THAT different. My 8th grader took the old one in 7th grade and the new one in 8th grade for CTY. For boys CTY scores difference is about 50 points in math and 40-50 points in verbal between 7th and 8th grade. My kid's math score went up 20 points and his verbal score 50. So I'd guess the Algebra 2 problems may have been an issue - he's in the NY equiv. of Alg 1 now. All CTY scores were about 5 points lower on average than last year btw.</p>
<p>See, Marite, I think he is a math person, intrinsically (hence the 760 on the SAT 1, no studying). Not like your S, of course, but it has always come very, very easily to him. He just didn't have the curriculum. And that shouldn't bar him from a good school, which maybe it woud have had it been included in in the SAT 1 rather than the 2.</p>
<p>Did your son not have Algebra 2 or trig by the time he took the SAT-II? How do you know he is a math person, then? Not being snarky, just curious. I was good at math so long as it involved arithmetic. Once I got to algebra I realized that I was not a math person.</p>
<p>Another question: Most highly selective colleges do ask for SATIIs and many specify a math or science SATII and a humanities/social studies one. So old or new SAT notwithstanding, he would still have had to take a SATII, right? But most students apply to less selective colleges, and less selective colleges require the SATII. And they don't expect 2400 on the SAT.</p>
<p>My S's math scores jumped from 680 on SAT 1 to 780 on SAT 2 (IIC). He did not do any extensive preparation for either, couple of practice tests and a little review with a book) . The format of SAT Subject test just works better for him. He felt that he could concentrate better on one subject without being jerked around switching to other ones and back.</p>
<p>He was in trig ("pre-calc") when he took the SATs. He got A's in there, as welll as Calc. He's not just an "arithmetic" person.</p>
<p>Most schools do not specifiy why SAT 2s you take (none he applied to required the math one.) But I maintain tht they'd look more askance at a low SAT 1 math than a low SAT 2 math. </p>
<p>Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he'd have done fine on the new SAT. But I maintain that, my own kids aside, a test that tests your hs, not you, is not fair to people from weak high schools.</p>
<p>If he is not an arithmetic person, all the more reason to have a test that includes topics other than arithmetic--such as algebra. He was in trig when he took the SAT, so he was prepared for the SAT, both the old and the new. It does not mean that he would not make mistakes, that he did not have an off day, or that his math teacher was terrific. But the new SAT was well within his range of preparation. Hereshoping has been claiming that some (many?) SAT-takers have not even completed algebra 2 and that the new SAT is an obstacle to their being admitted to selective colleges. That is a totally different line of argument from the one you are making.</p>
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a test that tests your hs, not you, is not fair to people from weak high schools.
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What is not fair is not the diagnosis, it is the situation; it is the reality. And the fact that your son's got As in the trig class but did not do so well on the SAT II could be explained by his having an off-day. Interestingly, you prefer to see it as the result of his mediocre school. The scenario whereby students from mediocre schools that are not doing a good job of educating their students yet give them As is <em>precisely</em> the reason you need a national yardstick. </p>
<p>I do not suggest dtiching all other components of the college application. Nor do I support ditching the SAT because schools are not the same, teachers are not the same, some students are late bloomers, brilliant slackers, some prep to a fare thee well and others not at all, etc...</p>
<p>And to those who would advocate students from disadvantaged backgrounds taking the SAT and others being allowed to exempt themselves from it, I am uncomfortably reminded of means tests.</p>
<p>I don't know how I can say this without sounding elitist or worse, but is it necessarily wrong that kids from "better" high schools get into better colleges? Aren't they better prepared (I've heard over and over that after our HS, college is a breeze)? If you go to a less challenging HS, aren't you less prepared for the demands of an academically rigorous program? Someone help me phrase this more delicately!</p>
<p>Marite, I agree tht the SAT should not be ditched; I have argued that it's a leveler for exceptional students from weak backgrouonds. But the more it becomes a content test rather than a reasoning test, the more it weighs against bright students from lesser schools. </p>
<p>My point is, an elite school is accepting the student, not the high school. That a student doesn't have the same content doesn't mean they can't excel at a tough school. My D and her buddy from a rural Wisc. school had to self-study after every gov class to catch up on the references,writers, theories, etc. tht other kids got in their Euro History classes in hs. Should the two of them not have been admitted to Wes because they didn't know the same stuff? I'd argue not, and that the fact that both graduated from there with top GPAs supports that.</p>
<p>Content tests are means tests far more than the older SAT is. the more that cotnent rather than ability is rewarded, the less the kids from the weaker school systems will have a chance. And sacrificing them in order to force the school systems to get better seems a tad savere to me. And unnecessary.</p>