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> from hard poverty to not being able to afford tutors and SAT prep courses. I went to a pretty fancy prep school with a lot of rich folks, but I don't think m

by _Nat_ 7y ago

> from hard poverty to not being able to afford tutors and SAT prep courses. I went to a pretty fancy prep school with a lot of rich folks, but I don't think most did any special prep for the SAT. I think we had a class period where they talked about the sorts of questions that appear on the exam, told us about when/where it'd be offered, etc., along with ads for SAT-prep services, but I think a lot of folks ended up deciding it would be best to get a good-night's sleep before walking in on it. (We also debated stuff like if drinking coffee or/and having a chocolate bar beforehand would be helpful.) Which isn't to downplay the advantages that affluent students enjoy, just, I don't think that SAT prep courses are really the big thing. (Plus I suspect that students who spend a lot of time doing test-specific prep are losing out on their actual education that they'll actually need later on.)

gumby 7y ago
Same: in 1981 our SAT "prep" was literally two sentences one morning: 1 - there will be little bubbles you need to fill in and you must use a pencil and 2 - some statistical strategy concerning guessing. Everybody took the test only once; I don't remember any efforts to game the system. But that in itself points out the advantage: the test was basically designed to reflect the level of instruction my school already gave. If you don't get that from your school (or believed you don't) you would have resorted to additional study and the like. Likewise back then there weren't "AP" classes and the like: if you wanted to take the AP test you could but there were no special arrangements at my school. I don't know how much things might have changed: my kid's SAT prep in 2017 was simply to purchase the book but not open it. On the other hand there's a whole apparatus of AP infrastructure with special "AP" classes, different scoring for those classes(!!) etc. AN enormous kabuki of infrastructure that as far as I can tell signifies nothing.
akhilcacharya 7y ago
> I think we had a class period where they talked about the sorts of questions that appear on the exam, told us about when/where it'd be offered, etc., along with ads for SAT-prep services, but I think a lot of folks ended up deciding it would be best to get a good-night's sleep before walking in on it. That's actually non-trivial amount of prep, but I personally don't know anybody that took the SAT "cold". Everyone prepped quite a bit - I prepped for months and got mediocre scores consistently ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- _Nat_ 7y ago
  Yeah.. prep doesn't seem too effective. That's what they told us at prep school (heh). I mean, they basically just said that we ought to ensure that we have sharpened pencils; adequate batteries for our calculator; a good-night's sleep; and to show up early. I can appreciate how some folks want to do better, and are willing to work for better scores by investing in test-prep. And I can understand how test-prep providers would encourage them to do so, talking up their own services, as any business would. But, I don't think it's that big a thing in the end. If anything, I worry that students who spend a lot of time prepping are being cheated out of their time, money, and education. --- PS: To be clear, students would definitely do well to spend time studying for their future. Just, instead of trying to game the SAT, they can learn something useful, whether that's math, physics, computer programming, philosophy, creative writing, or whatever.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > I personally don't know anybody that took the SAT "cold" How do you define "cold"? IIRC, my prep consisted of just taking the PSAT. I ended up with a 1370 (700 verbal, 670 math), which was good enough for my purposes.
crispyambulance 7y ago
> I went to a pretty fancy prep school with a lot of rich folks... I suspect you might not be aware of what a vast number of public schools in the USA are actually like. SAT prep becomes more and more critical for students as they come from increasingly underperforming high schools. There are schools where ~1/3 of the students just wander the halls aimlessly instead of going to class, where teachers turn over at a rate of 25%/year. In such schools even students who intend to go to college are going to be utterly unprepared for the SAT. These students actually need a prep course.
- _Nat_ 7y ago
  I'm not sure I follow your point. I mean, hypothetically, let's say that a student never attends class, just aimlessly wandering the halls (which I'm skeptical about, but let's go with it). Then even if they somehow game the SAT and get into a good college, then what? If they're basically uneducated upon entering college, then it seems like, best-case scenario, they'll get like 4 years of education in college -- making them analogous to a student with a gradeschool education, right? I mean, this sounds like a smoke-and-mirrors scheme.
  - crispyambulance 7y ago
    I am not saying that the students aimlessly wandering the halls are taking the SAT-- they're in the jail or dead-end-job pipeline. They are NOT going to college. But there are other students in such schools, however, that are trying to make the best of the situation they're in and these students want to go to college. Sadly, these school is so busy with discipline and attendance issues that it's almost impossible for serious students to get prepared for college. And yes, there are many public schools that would appear to a visitor as chaos. Students do just roam the hallways if they don't feel like going to class. There can be so many doing this that it looks like they're changing class-- all the time. Not exaggerating.
  - mrep 7y ago
    > just aimlessly wandering the halls (which I'm skeptical about, but let's go with it) For some schools it is a real problem. My girlfriend works at a pretty bad high school and she has tons of students who keep failing their classes because they never show up and the principal literally wanders the halls himself to try and force kids to go back to class.
thrower123 7y ago
I also don't recall any particular preparation that I did for the SAT - I may have picked up a second-hand prep book somewhere. But it was not like it was rocket science to know how one is supposed to take these kinds of tests. I graduated from a very unremarkable rural school system in New England. From 2nd grade on, we took a standardized scantron-type test (the CAT test, if I recall correctly). In 4th and 7th or 8th we took a state-wide standardized test that was more of the same multiple-choice sections, with an additional writing component that was a watered-down version of the now-discontinued writing portion of the SAT. Then I believe that they had us all take the PSAT in 10th or 11th grade, and they also encouraged people to take the ASVAB, as we had a large percentage that were planning on the military anyway. By the point it was time to take the SATs, all of the strategies and gimmicks that are covered in test prep for the SAT were pretty old hat, and we'd been through that wringer at least a dozen times over by then.

by _Nat_ 7y ago

gumby 7y ago

Same: in 1981 our SAT "prep" was literally two sentences one morning: 1 - there will be little bubbles you need to fill in and you must use a pencil and 2 - some statistical strategy concerning guessing. Everybody took the test only once; I don't remember any efforts to game the system. But that in itself points out the advantage: the test was basically designed to reflect the level of instruction my school already gave. If you don't get that from your school (or believed you don't) you would have resorted to additional study and the like. Likewise back then there weren't "AP" classes and the like: if you wanted to take the AP test you could but there were no special arrangements at my school. I don't know how much things might have changed: my kid's SAT prep in 2017 was simply to purchase the book but not open it. On the other hand there's a whole apparatus of AP infrastructure with special "AP" classes, different scoring for those classes(!!) etc. AN enormous kabuki of infrastructure that as far as I can tell signifies nothing.

akhilcacharya 7y ago

> I think we had a class period where they talked about the sorts of questions that appear on the exam, told us about when/where it'd be offered, etc., along with ads for SAT-prep services, but I think a lot of folks ended up deciding it would be best to get a good-night's sleep before walking in on it. That's actually non-trivial amount of prep, but I personally don't know anybody that took the SAT "cold". Everyone prepped quite a bit - I prepped for months and got mediocre scores consistently ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

_Nat_ 7y ago
Yeah.. prep doesn't seem too effective. That's what they told us at prep school (heh). I mean, they basically just said that we ought to ensure that we have sharpened pencils; adequate batteries for our calculator; a good-night's sleep; and to show up early. I can appreciate how some folks want to do better, and are willing to work for better scores by investing in test-prep. And I can understand how test-prep providers would encourage them to do so, talking up their own services, as any business would. But, I don't think it's that big a thing in the end. If anything, I worry that students who spend a lot of time prepping are being cheated out of their time, money, and education. --- PS: To be clear, students would definitely do well to spend time studying for their future. Just, instead of trying to game the SAT, they can learn something useful, whether that's math, physics, computer programming, philosophy, creative writing, or whatever.
vonmoltke 7y ago
> I personally don't know anybody that took the SAT "cold" How do you define "cold"? IIRC, my prep consisted of just taking the PSAT. I ended up with a 1370 (700 verbal, 670 math), which was good enough for my purposes.

crispyambulance 7y ago

> I went to a pretty fancy prep school with a lot of rich folks... I suspect you might not be aware of what a vast number of public schools in the USA are actually like. SAT prep becomes more and more critical for students as they come from increasingly underperforming high schools. There are schools where ~1/3 of the students just wander the halls aimlessly instead of going to class, where teachers turn over at a rate of 25%/year. In such schools even students who intend to go to college are going to be utterly unprepared for the SAT. These students actually need a prep course.

_Nat_ 7y ago
I'm not sure I follow your point. I mean, hypothetically, let's say that a student never attends class, just aimlessly wandering the halls (which I'm skeptical about, but let's go with it). Then even if they somehow game the SAT and get into a good college, then what? If they're basically uneducated upon entering college, then it seems like, best-case scenario, they'll get like 4 years of education in college -- making them analogous to a student with a gradeschool education, right? I mean, this sounds like a smoke-and-mirrors scheme.
- crispyambulance 7y ago
  I am not saying that the students aimlessly wandering the halls are taking the SAT-- they're in the jail or dead-end-job pipeline. They are NOT going to college. But there are other students in such schools, however, that are trying to make the best of the situation they're in and these students want to go to college. Sadly, these school is so busy with discipline and attendance issues that it's almost impossible for serious students to get prepared for college. And yes, there are many public schools that would appear to a visitor as chaos. Students do just roam the hallways if they don't feel like going to class. There can be so many doing this that it looks like they're changing class-- all the time. Not exaggerating.
- mrep 7y ago
  > just aimlessly wandering the halls (which I'm skeptical about, but let's go with it) For some schools it is a real problem. My girlfriend works at a pretty bad high school and she has tons of students who keep failing their classes because they never show up and the principal literally wanders the halls himself to try and force kids to go back to class.

thrower123 7y ago

I also don't recall any particular preparation that I did for the SAT - I may have picked up a second-hand prep book somewhere. But it was not like it was rocket science to know how one is supposed to take these kinds of tests. I graduated from a very unremarkable rural school system in New England. From 2nd grade on, we took a standardized scantron-type test (the CAT test, if I recall correctly). In 4th and 7th or 8th we took a state-wide standardized test that was more of the same multiple-choice sections, with an additional writing component that was a watered-down version of the now-discontinued writing portion of the SAT. Then I believe that they had us all take the PSAT in 10th or 11th grade, and they also encouraged people to take the ASVAB, as we had a large percentage that were planning on the military anyway. By the point it was time to take the SATs, all of the strategies and gimmicks that are covered in test prep for the SAT were pretty old hat, and we'd been through that wringer at least a dozen times over by then.