4 ms·

The "formula for success" appears to be: study. Is that concept so alien if you're not a "rich kid"? Now, don't get me wrong: there's a clear disconnect in abi

by basseq 9y ago

The "formula for success" appears to be: study. Is that concept so alien if you're not a "rich kid"? Now, don't get me wrong: there's a clear disconnect in ability and means to prep. Even though there are cheap or free prep courses or materials, many won't be able to dedicate—for example—the time to cram or take Sunday classes an hour away due to jobs or family commitments.

qntty 9y ago
Studying with that kind of intensity certainly is. For most kids "studying for the SAT" means doing 1 or 2 practice tests on a lazy Saturday.
- basseq 9y ago
  But is the difference due to some secret that "non-rich kids" don't know? That most kids don't do more isn't a surprise. But why don't they know more? This article suggests that "they didn't know they could (or should)". I would wager that most kids don't want to put in the work to be a true over-achiever. Or because they haven't been raised that way. Not because they're unaware of the benefits. I'm trying not to fall into the trap of suggesting the reason for success is "hard work" when socioeconomic differences in opportunities explain much or all of the gap. But that truly seems to be the thesis presented here.
  - qntty 9y ago
    I would certainly agree that they are aware of the benefits of going to a good school. I just think you are seriously underestimating the importance that mimicking other people plays in learning to do something you've never done before. We all do it, when you're writing some code that you've never worked with before, you read the code of someone else who has done something similar. When navigating the little rituals involved in going to college, you do what your friend is doing or what your older sister did or (for more ambitious students) what the people on college confidential tell you to do. It's not that there is some bit of knowledge that poor kids don't have, it's that they have no one to mimic. There are a million little decisions that go into how to spend your time in high school. Figuring out the best way to spend it is far too big of a task for any one student. The only way to have any hope of spending it well is to copy what others have done and learn from their mistakes. In elite schools, you have much better role models to mimic. If you want to go to Harvard, you can mimic what that kid who got into Harvard did last year. A general principle like "just work hard if you want to succeed" is worse that useless for a kids in mediocre school districts. Not only does it do nothing to show them how to actually spend their time, but it's so general that it can never be proved "wrong." So if a student tries to do what they consider "hard work" and that doesn't lead to success, people aren't going to stop saying it because it didn't work. Moreover, since the kid who failed knows that they were given "correct advice" they're just going to blame themselves for their failure rather than realizing that they have the same potential as people in better school districts, they just don't have as much opportunity to realize it. Still, advice like "work hard to succeed" will always be "wrong" in the sense that it's the wrong thing to tell a young person. No matter what advice you give a young person, it needs to be much more specific and personalized if you want it to have a reasonably good chance of being understood and used correctly. You can't expect someone with so little life experience to fill in the blanks for themselves.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  I must echo the same sentiment as the GP. It really all comes down to effective studying, and is very accessible to all income levels. Just buy one or two good prep books, and get access to practice tests (I used only the ones in the books, BTW). I didn't enter into any SAT prep program, and always felt they were for people who did not know how to study well. It doesn't even require much intensity if you do it right. For both the SAT and the GRE, I began studying 9-12 months before I expected to take the exam. I spent only a small amount of time a week on it (1-2 hours). The trick was to be regular and consistent. Towards the end, start taking practice tests. I got a pretty good score on the SAT and a fantastic score in the GRE (easily in the 99 percentile range). No tutors. No prep programs. Just a bunch of books, and 1-2 hours a week. That's all it takes.
  - qntty 9y ago
    I would agree that it's accessible, but this doesn't make it any less alien. Most people I knew in high school (at a non-elite school) were barely even conscious of the fact that they would be taking the SATs 9 months before they did (they knew that it was something they would have to do, but it wasn't concrete enough to cause them to do anything about it). For most, studying at all was something that only the more ambitious kids did. I'm not sure if there was a single student in my graduating class who spent as much time studying as you did, including some students who went to competitive colleges (there might have been but they didn't talk about it, the fact that people do this wasn't part of the collective consciousness). Again, I'm just saying that for many students, reading this article would expose them to something that they haven't really been exposed to so far.
    - BeetleB 9y ago
      >For most, studying at all was something that only the more ambitious kids did. So now we know the secret of poorly performing kids. Well, of course, if you want an ambitious score, you study. If you don't, you do not get a good score. I think my other point was that it does not require a lot of study! I studied more for my usual classes in school than I did for the SAT/GRE. But if you try to cram it all in 3 months before the SAT, you're setting yourself up for trouble.
- stickperson 9y ago
  Exactly. When I was in high school, two other classmates and I would go to our English teacher's class during homeroom for SAT prep. We did this for 10 minutes a day for maybe a month. Outside of that, the only prep I did was studying for the SAT IIs the night before. I did well in high school only studying on the train into school on the days of exams. That formula worked for me, and I figured everybody else did something similar. I knew I had to "study" for the SAT if I wanted to better than average, and practicing vocabulary during homeroom seemed like more than what everybody else was doing. I happened to get into a good college and really struggled the first year. I studied harder than usual, but it wasn't until I started studying with some friends that I saw how much more work other people put into school.
  - iamacynic 9y ago
    it's a common story. i slacked and crammed my way through most of high school and rode into university on super high SAT scores (because i studied a lot and took classes). once i got there, it wasn't easy. mainly because i didn't really care about school, and refused to put in the time. apparently cramming doesn't work for linear algebra unless you are a genius, which i'm not.
sjg007 9y ago
Honestly schools should offer prep classes.
- simplyluke 9y ago
  Mine did, most students didn't take it.
ivanbakel 9y ago
>Is that concept so alien if you're not a "rich kid"? That's the point of the article - why is the concept alien at all? Why should it be strange for children from lower- to middle-income backgrounds to be in academic programs over the summer, but perfectly normal for the rich? What has normalised that divide in society? It's a valid question. Do poor children not want to work hard, or do they not know how hard they're obliged, or able, or work?
- diminoten 9y ago
  I didn't go to a poor school, but there were poor kids in my school, and being friends with some of them, I know that there wasn't a 1:1 correlation between "poor kids" and "kids who don't study", there was some correlation. I don't know why, but I don't think it was just because their parents didn't happen to have cash. My totally anecdotal view on this is that looking at income might be the tail wagging the dog. The poor parents tended to have less complete grasps on their lives, which gave the kids fewer role models to figure out what "good habits" were and how they lended to success. These parents didn't have habits of successful people, which contributed to their poverty, as well as the (lack of) habits of their children. The poor kids I knew who were successful academically found other role models, people to explain to them that you can take the SATs twice, and if you spend a couple hours a week studying for them you'll do significantly better, and yes, it is worth the time, etc.
nkrisc 9y ago
For some people, yeah it might very well be. If no one you know personally has that kind of attitude nor has even been to college, where do you learn it from? Theoretically you'd learn it at school but many underfunded public schools are just glorified babysitting anyway. So yeah, it might be a foreign concept.
nickparker 9y ago
I don't think it's actually a means problem, I think it's a community values one. People mostly act in their short term interest. When we do more forward-looking things like studying or investing in retirement, it's because we strongly believe those actions will pay off in the future. That strong belief in the value of studying is the advantage rich kids enjoy. Everyone around them agrees that studying is a very good use of time with high expected value down the line, so on any given afternoon it's easy for them to choose that valuable activity over hanging out with their friends. The same isn't remotely true for poorer kids. Some of their friends tease them for studying because "you're never going to get into college anyway," and the adults in their life probably support studying, but in an abstract and understated way. Studying is "a good thing" for a poor kid, while it's a critical factor for future success to a rich kid. Yes, with the internet and public libraries it wouldn't be logistically difficult for a poor kid to study as much as a rich one, but without an entire community pressing its importance onto them it's immensely hard to actually do it.
meow_mix 9y ago
You're missing the point --the issue isn't just that you're supposed to study, you need to know what to study and when to study it. The kids in the article are studying very hard for preparatory SAT, which apparently gives them a valuable distinction (national merit scholar). Many high schoolers chose to sit this exam out, and weren't aware it was even important to study for it (myself included). The article describes a studying process that is nearly athletic for an exam that isn't stressed as important to high schoolers in lower income areas, this is a huge information gap between social classes that needs corrected.
- triangleman 9y ago
  Uh, I went to a top magnet high school and don't remember taking the PSAT, nor many of my peers. Now, many of us took SAT Subject Tests[0], and most of us took at least one AP Test. As for the SAT, everyone studied their butts off. I also went off the beaten path like the author of the article, and enrolled in a local, inexpensive, SAT study course run by a Korean teacher for mainly Korean-American students in an upstairs office above a takeout restaurant (I was one of the only non-Asian students there). The course involved long hours of drilling vocab and some math, and expected us to drill much more at home. In the end, the most valuable technique for the SAT was time management. One book[1] even had pages of "answer bubbles" in the back for you to practice penciling your answer, saving precious time. It also recommended skipping/guessing on questions you were having trouble on and moving on to the next one. Students coming into the SAT with no foreknowledge have no clue that they will be racing the clock. It's not obvious that time management is one of the most important factors and if you simply told someone taking the test cold "make sure you fill in an answer for all the questions" their score would improve by 100 points or more. But I would guess that most students turn in answer sheets with blanks. As they say, the SAT is a great test of your ability to take the SAT. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT_Subject_Tests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT_Subject_Tests [1]: https://www.workman.com/products/up-your-score-sat-2018-2019-edition https://www.workman.com/products/up-your-score-sat-2018-2019...
  - JauntTrooper 9y ago
    We took the PSAT in 8th grade as a placement test to get into a (public) magnet high school.
harmegido 9y ago
It's about knowing that studying is even an option or that it's something that should be done. In certain circles, you'd be considered very odd for not studying, whereas in others, your peers would think you were a crazy high achiever for even buying a book.
ashark 9y ago
That you're supposed to try to "game" it any way you can and that it's not a one-off attempt to genuinely assess your ability might not be obvious to everyone.
scarface74 9y ago
My son didn't have a high enough ACT score to get into the college he wanted to go to. We paid $100 an hour for 13 one on one test prep tutorials with college professors and MBA grads and he got in. There are plenty of parents who couldn't afford that whose kids are just as smart. I did well on the SAT (the very top scorer in my class), but how much of that was due to natural gifts, and how much of that was due to having a parent who was both a high school math teacher and someone who spent years tutoring and administering the SAT?

by basseq 9y ago

qntty 9y ago

Studying with that kind of intensity certainly is. For most kids "studying for the SAT" means doing 1 or 2 practice tests on a lazy Saturday.

basseq 9y ago
But is the difference due to some secret that "non-rich kids" don't know? That most kids don't do more isn't a surprise. But why don't they know more? This article suggests that "they didn't know they could (or should)". I would wager that most kids don't want to put in the work to be a true over-achiever. Or because they haven't been raised that way. Not because they're unaware of the benefits. I'm trying not to fall into the trap of suggesting the reason for success is "hard work" when socioeconomic differences in opportunities explain much or all of the gap. But that truly seems to be the thesis presented here.
- qntty 9y ago
  I would certainly agree that they are aware of the benefits of going to a good school. I just think you are seriously underestimating the importance that mimicking other people plays in learning to do something you've never done before. We all do it, when you're writing some code that you've never worked with before, you read the code of someone else who has done something similar. When navigating the little rituals involved in going to college, you do what your friend is doing or what your older sister did or (for more ambitious students) what the people on college confidential tell you to do. It's not that there is some bit of knowledge that poor kids don't have, it's that they have no one to mimic. There are a million little decisions that go into how to spend your time in high school. Figuring out the best way to spend it is far too big of a task for any one student. The only way to have any hope of spending it well is to copy what others have done and learn from their mistakes. In elite schools, you have much better role models to mimic. If you want to go to Harvard, you can mimic what that kid who got into Harvard did last year. A general principle like "just work hard if you want to succeed" is worse that useless for a kids in mediocre school districts. Not only does it do nothing to show them how to actually spend their time, but it's so general that it can never be proved "wrong." So if a student tries to do what they consider "hard work" and that doesn't lead to success, people aren't going to stop saying it because it didn't work. Moreover, since the kid who failed knows that they were given "correct advice" they're just going to blame themselves for their failure rather than realizing that they have the same potential as people in better school districts, they just don't have as much opportunity to realize it. Still, advice like "work hard to succeed" will always be "wrong" in the sense that it's the wrong thing to tell a young person. No matter what advice you give a young person, it needs to be much more specific and personalized if you want it to have a reasonably good chance of being understood and used correctly. You can't expect someone with so little life experience to fill in the blanks for themselves.
BeetleB 9y ago
I must echo the same sentiment as the GP. It really all comes down to effective studying, and is very accessible to all income levels. Just buy one or two good prep books, and get access to practice tests (I used only the ones in the books, BTW). I didn't enter into any SAT prep program, and always felt they were for people who did not know how to study well. It doesn't even require much intensity if you do it right. For both the SAT and the GRE, I began studying 9-12 months before I expected to take the exam. I spent only a small amount of time a week on it (1-2 hours). The trick was to be regular and consistent. Towards the end, start taking practice tests. I got a pretty good score on the SAT and a fantastic score in the GRE (easily in the 99 percentile range). No tutors. No prep programs. Just a bunch of books, and 1-2 hours a week. That's all it takes.
- qntty 9y ago
  I would agree that it's accessible, but this doesn't make it any less alien. Most people I knew in high school (at a non-elite school) were barely even conscious of the fact that they would be taking the SATs 9 months before they did (they knew that it was something they would have to do, but it wasn't concrete enough to cause them to do anything about it). For most, studying at all was something that only the more ambitious kids did. I'm not sure if there was a single student in my graduating class who spent as much time studying as you did, including some students who went to competitive colleges (there might have been but they didn't talk about it, the fact that people do this wasn't part of the collective consciousness). Again, I'm just saying that for many students, reading this article would expose them to something that they haven't really been exposed to so far.
  - BeetleB 9y ago
    >For most, studying at all was something that only the more ambitious kids did. So now we know the secret of poorly performing kids. Well, of course, if you want an ambitious score, you study. If you don't, you do not get a good score. I think my other point was that it does not require a lot of study! I studied more for my usual classes in school than I did for the SAT/GRE. But if you try to cram it all in 3 months before the SAT, you're setting yourself up for trouble.
stickperson 9y ago
Exactly. When I was in high school, two other classmates and I would go to our English teacher's class during homeroom for SAT prep. We did this for 10 minutes a day for maybe a month. Outside of that, the only prep I did was studying for the SAT IIs the night before. I did well in high school only studying on the train into school on the days of exams. That formula worked for me, and I figured everybody else did something similar. I knew I had to "study" for the SAT if I wanted to better than average, and practicing vocabulary during homeroom seemed like more than what everybody else was doing. I happened to get into a good college and really struggled the first year. I studied harder than usual, but it wasn't until I started studying with some friends that I saw how much more work other people put into school.
- iamacynic 9y ago
  it's a common story. i slacked and crammed my way through most of high school and rode into university on super high SAT scores (because i studied a lot and took classes). once i got there, it wasn't easy. mainly because i didn't really care about school, and refused to put in the time. apparently cramming doesn't work for linear algebra unless you are a genius, which i'm not.

sjg007 9y ago

Honestly schools should offer prep classes.

simplyluke 9y ago
Mine did, most students didn't take it.

ivanbakel 9y ago

>Is that concept so alien if you're not a "rich kid"? That's the point of the article - why is the concept alien at all? Why should it be strange for children from lower- to middle-income backgrounds to be in academic programs over the summer, but perfectly normal for the rich? What has normalised that divide in society? It's a valid question. Do poor children not want to work hard, or do they not know how hard they're obliged, or able, or work?

diminoten 9y ago
I didn't go to a poor school, but there were poor kids in my school, and being friends with some of them, I know that there wasn't a 1:1 correlation between "poor kids" and "kids who don't study", there was some correlation. I don't know why, but I don't think it was just because their parents didn't happen to have cash. My totally anecdotal view on this is that looking at income might be the tail wagging the dog. The poor parents tended to have less complete grasps on their lives, which gave the kids fewer role models to figure out what "good habits" were and how they lended to success. These parents didn't have habits of successful people, which contributed to their poverty, as well as the (lack of) habits of their children. The poor kids I knew who were successful academically found other role models, people to explain to them that you can take the SATs twice, and if you spend a couple hours a week studying for them you'll do significantly better, and yes, it is worth the time, etc.

nkrisc 9y ago

For some people, yeah it might very well be. If no one you know personally has that kind of attitude nor has even been to college, where do you learn it from? Theoretically you'd learn it at school but many underfunded public schools are just glorified babysitting anyway. So yeah, it might be a foreign concept.

nickparker 9y ago

I don't think it's actually a means problem, I think it's a community values one. People mostly act in their short term interest. When we do more forward-looking things like studying or investing in retirement, it's because we strongly believe those actions will pay off in the future. That strong belief in the value of studying is the advantage rich kids enjoy. Everyone around them agrees that studying is a very good use of time with high expected value down the line, so on any given afternoon it's easy for them to choose that valuable activity over hanging out with their friends. The same isn't remotely true for poorer kids. Some of their friends tease them for studying because "you're never going to get into college anyway," and the adults in their life probably support studying, but in an abstract and understated way. Studying is "a good thing" for a poor kid, while it's a critical factor for future success to a rich kid. Yes, with the internet and public libraries it wouldn't be logistically difficult for a poor kid to study as much as a rich one, but without an entire community pressing its importance onto them it's immensely hard to actually do it.

meow_mix 9y ago

You're missing the point --the issue isn't just that you're supposed to study, you need to know what to study and when to study it. The kids in the article are studying very hard for preparatory SAT, which apparently gives them a valuable distinction (national merit scholar). Many high schoolers chose to sit this exam out, and weren't aware it was even important to study for it (myself included). The article describes a studying process that is nearly athletic for an exam that isn't stressed as important to high schoolers in lower income areas, this is a huge information gap between social classes that needs corrected.

triangleman 9y ago
Uh, I went to a top magnet high school and don't remember taking the PSAT, nor many of my peers. Now, many of us took SAT Subject Tests[0], and most of us took at least one AP Test. As for the SAT, everyone studied their butts off. I also went off the beaten path like the author of the article, and enrolled in a local, inexpensive, SAT study course run by a Korean teacher for mainly Korean-American students in an upstairs office above a takeout restaurant (I was one of the only non-Asian students there). The course involved long hours of drilling vocab and some math, and expected us to drill much more at home. In the end, the most valuable technique for the SAT was time management. One book[1] even had pages of "answer bubbles" in the back for you to practice penciling your answer, saving precious time. It also recommended skipping/guessing on questions you were having trouble on and moving on to the next one. Students coming into the SAT with no foreknowledge have no clue that they will be racing the clock. It's not obvious that time management is one of the most important factors and if you simply told someone taking the test cold "make sure you fill in an answer for all the questions" their score would improve by 100 points or more. But I would guess that most students turn in answer sheets with blanks. As they say, the SAT is a great test of your ability to take the SAT. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT_Subject_Tests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT_Subject_Tests [1]: https://www.workman.com/products/up-your-score-sat-2018-2019-edition https://www.workman.com/products/up-your-score-sat-2018-2019...
- JauntTrooper 9y ago
  We took the PSAT in 8th grade as a placement test to get into a (public) magnet high school.

harmegido 9y ago

It's about knowing that studying is even an option or that it's something that should be done. In certain circles, you'd be considered very odd for not studying, whereas in others, your peers would think you were a crazy high achiever for even buying a book.

ashark 9y ago

That you're supposed to try to "game" it any way you can and that it's not a one-off attempt to genuinely assess your ability might not be obvious to everyone.

scarface74 9y ago

My son didn't have a high enough ACT score to get into the college he wanted to go to. We paid $100 an hour for 13 one on one test prep tutorials with college professors and MBA grads and he got in. There are plenty of parents who couldn't afford that whose kids are just as smart. I did well on the SAT (the very top scorer in my class), but how much of that was due to natural gifts, and how much of that was due to having a parent who was both a high school math teacher and someone who spent years tutoring and administering the SAT?