4 ms·

I'm an underrepresented minority and I increased my SAT score by 200-300 from the PSAT to SAT, depending on how you want to measure the change. This was just by

I'm an underrepresented minority and I increased my SAT score by 200-300 from the PSAT to SAT, depending on how you want to measure the change. This was just by doing self-study with off the shelf test prep material. The classes aren't what increases your score, its the consistent structured study and ones innate potential. For some people, no amount of study is going to get them into the 90+th percentile. While others who have the capacity to do well but haven't had the best instruction over the years can cover a lot of ground with the right prep. But this is exactly what SAT is intended to measure, scholastic potential. That some people can increase scores dramatically through preparation does not indicate a failure of the test, but rather its success.

SkyBelow 7y ago
>But this is exactly what SAT is intended to measure, scholastic potential. But if you define the variable like this, you end up opening a can of worms. Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have better access to resources? Or should scholastic potential be the measurement of how a child performs assuming they had the same access to resources? Should children who belong to a racial/ethnic group that have social stereotypes of having more scholastic potential be defined as having more scholastic potential because of the effect of stereotypes and labels, or should the measure of scholastic potential be of the underlying potential if the effects of stereotypes and labels were equal? Normally measurements of potential aim to be to measure the factors least impacted by other factors, because if we account for those factors we are measuring actual instead of potential.
- askafriend 7y ago
  > Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have better access to resources? Yes. They do. It's maybe not the answer you were looking for, but if you are better prepared, you'll do better at the task at hand. Seems fairly straightforward. The next question would be how easy are those resources to access (in the case of the SAT)? And the answer is you can do pretty well with a $20 test prep book that you can order from Amazon. The rest is time, effort, awareness etc. Then we start getting into factors that are much harder to control or evaluate - parental involvement, guidance, nutrition, emotional support, etc.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    >Yes. They do. It's maybe not the answer you were looking for, but if you are better prepared, you'll do better at the task at hand. Seems fairly straightforward. I think you missed the point of the two questions, which is a question of what scholastic potential issue. What you are measuring is something that I might call scholastic actuality. It is how good they are with the tools they have. Potential is how good they are if we normalize the tools. Granted, we don't have to go with that definition. If you want to call what I'm calling actuality potential, then that is fine. Just redefining a variable. But then we need a name for what I'm calling potential. Potential potential sounds a bit weird, but naming variables is hard so I'll use it as a placeholder for now. So now that we have academic potential and academic potential potential, which should a person be ranked based off of when going to college? Given that academic potential is more dependent upon environmental factors that will change and be normalized between all freshmen (to some degree, there is still some differences), then should academic potential potential be a better predictor for success at college? That isn't the complete answer, and real life is much more complicated than these simple equations. Just like emotional support can lead to a more mature individual that even once the emotional support is gone they have a life long benefit from.
    - ebrenes 7y ago
      But every metric used by colleges is to measure what you termed "scholastic actuality": - School grades: if you didn't get the GPA you're already out of the running in many colleges - Extracurricular Activities: if you didn't actually participate, then no one is going to look at how you might have done if you had participated - College Essay: if you can't write you're not going to get any points here, no matter the potential you might have to eventually write something amazing I don't see why the SAT should focus on some ethereal "potential" when everything else is centered on the current reality and not potential. Colleges aren't looking for the completely unrefined ore, they're looking for a diamond in the rough that needs to be cut and polished if you will. Not a bucket of rocks that are very likely to contain a diamond.
      - askafriend 7y ago
- _fq4v 7y ago
  > Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have better access to resources? Do kids with involved parents have access to more scholastic potential because their parents cared? Almost certainly, and that's a good thing and we should harvest it, not attempt to force something that is not going to work.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    Once they are in college, the impact of parents is quite minified. So if you have a stupid whose default academic potential is 10 but has a parental multiplier of 2 for having involved parents and another kid whose default academic potential is 15 but has a parental multiplier of 1 for parents who don't care, once they get into college and the parental multiplier goes away the one who has a 15 should do better than the one who has a 10. Now, numbers aren't that easily available. And maybe parents caring has a permanent effect that lasts even once they are gone. Real life is far more complicated than my example. But it shows a very simple possibility of why measuring potential while ignoring environmental failures can lead to a sub-optimal ranking.
    - _fq4v 7y ago
      > Once they are in college, the impact of parents is quite minified What an absolutely ridiculous thought. Literally our entire personality, our study habits, and our grit come from our parents.
      - octorian 7y ago
        Perhaps, but it doesn't necessarily translate so directly. When a kid's academic achievement is significantly caused by their parents constantly putting daily active pressure on them, the removal of that pressure can cause them to completely fall apart.
      - SkyBelow 7y ago
        Apologies. I meant the ongoing direct impacts like forcing you to get up in time for class, enforcing a curfew, consistently encouraging time to be spent studying. The impacts on the changes to a child, are another impact, and one that is even harder to account for. Take a simple example of waking up in time for class. You can have a college freshman who was taught by their parents to be up on time. You can also have a college freshman who always depended upon their parents to wake them up and is thus oversleeping. The former seems more in line with the true potential, while the latter is a temporary benefit from parents. A kid who taught themselves how to wake barely on time will do worse than a kid whose parents makes sure they wake up with time to spare when parents are present, but if the parents don't instill the values of waking up on time to the latter child, then in college the former one will do better.
applecrazy 7y ago
This. I’m a college freshman and took the SAT and PSAT when in high school. I’m also not a minority. While I and my parents could have afforded the expensive prep courses the students around me were taking , I decided to skip these and focus purely on solo prep. Across the PSAT and SAT, I spent a total of $50 for my prep–a $35 dollar, thick book of SAT problems, and a $15 PSAT prep book. Technically, you don’t even need to buy these books—many libraries offer the books to borrow for free. Just going through those books and drilling incessantly on weekends and in my free time was enough to get me a 1520 on the PSAT (the max score, which helped in gaining merit scholarships, which is the reason I go to school for free right now), and a 1540 on the SAT (99th percentile). I also used Khan Academy extensively, which provides free prep sponsored by Collegeboard. In my opinion, prep courses are just a means for unmotivated students to put in the same amount of work as a highly diligent, self-studying student. There’s plenty of free and relatively inexpensive resort resources out there nowadays, it just requires time and attention (which sadly a lot of my generation doesn’t have).
- 3131s 7y ago
  No one even told us at my school that the PSAT would count for national merit scholarships, which ended up saving me $20,000 on university tuition over four years.
threatofrain 7y ago
If you want a less gameable test you eventually just end up testing for IQ, but do we want to promote mere intelligence vs what you’ve done with it?

SkyBelow 7y ago

>But this is exactly what SAT is intended to measure, scholastic potential. But if you define the variable like this, you end up opening a can of worms. Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have better access to resources? Or should scholastic potential be the measurement of how a child performs assuming they had the same access to resources? Should children who belong to a racial/ethnic group that have social stereotypes of having more scholastic potential be defined as having more scholastic potential because of the effect of stereotypes and labels, or should the measure of scholastic potential be of the underlying potential if the effects of stereotypes and labels were equal? Normally measurements of potential aim to be to measure the factors least impacted by other factors, because if we account for those factors we are measuring actual instead of potential.

askafriend 7y ago
> Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have better access to resources? Yes. They do. It's maybe not the answer you were looking for, but if you are better prepared, you'll do better at the task at hand. Seems fairly straightforward. The next question would be how easy are those resources to access (in the case of the SAT)? And the answer is you can do pretty well with a $20 test prep book that you can order from Amazon. The rest is time, effort, awareness etc. Then we start getting into factors that are much harder to control or evaluate - parental involvement, guidance, nutrition, emotional support, etc.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  >Yes. They do. It's maybe not the answer you were looking for, but if you are better prepared, you'll do better at the task at hand. Seems fairly straightforward. I think you missed the point of the two questions, which is a question of what scholastic potential issue. What you are measuring is something that I might call scholastic actuality. It is how good they are with the tools they have. Potential is how good they are if we normalize the tools. Granted, we don't have to go with that definition. If you want to call what I'm calling actuality potential, then that is fine. Just redefining a variable. But then we need a name for what I'm calling potential. Potential potential sounds a bit weird, but naming variables is hard so I'll use it as a placeholder for now. So now that we have academic potential and academic potential potential, which should a person be ranked based off of when going to college? Given that academic potential is more dependent upon environmental factors that will change and be normalized between all freshmen (to some degree, there is still some differences), then should academic potential potential be a better predictor for success at college? That isn't the complete answer, and real life is much more complicated than these simple equations. Just like emotional support can lead to a more mature individual that even once the emotional support is gone they have a life long benefit from.
  - ebrenes 7y ago
    But every metric used by colleges is to measure what you termed "scholastic actuality": - School grades: if you didn't get the GPA you're already out of the running in many colleges - Extracurricular Activities: if you didn't actually participate, then no one is going to look at how you might have done if you had participated - College Essay: if you can't write you're not going to get any points here, no matter the potential you might have to eventually write something amazing I don't see why the SAT should focus on some ethereal "potential" when everything else is centered on the current reality and not potential. Colleges aren't looking for the completely unrefined ore, they're looking for a diamond in the rough that needs to be cut and polished if you will. Not a bucket of rocks that are very likely to contain a diamond.
    - askafriend 7y ago
_fq4v 7y ago
> Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have better access to resources? Do kids with involved parents have access to more scholastic potential because their parents cared? Almost certainly, and that's a good thing and we should harvest it, not attempt to force something that is not going to work.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Once they are in college, the impact of parents is quite minified. So if you have a stupid whose default academic potential is 10 but has a parental multiplier of 2 for having involved parents and another kid whose default academic potential is 15 but has a parental multiplier of 1 for parents who don't care, once they get into college and the parental multiplier goes away the one who has a 15 should do better than the one who has a 10. Now, numbers aren't that easily available. And maybe parents caring has a permanent effect that lasts even once they are gone. Real life is far more complicated than my example. But it shows a very simple possibility of why measuring potential while ignoring environmental failures can lead to a sub-optimal ranking.
  - _fq4v 7y ago
    > Once they are in college, the impact of parents is quite minified What an absolutely ridiculous thought. Literally our entire personality, our study habits, and our grit come from our parents.
    - octorian 7y ago
      Perhaps, but it doesn't necessarily translate so directly. When a kid's academic achievement is significantly caused by their parents constantly putting daily active pressure on them, the removal of that pressure can cause them to completely fall apart.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      Apologies. I meant the ongoing direct impacts like forcing you to get up in time for class, enforcing a curfew, consistently encouraging time to be spent studying. The impacts on the changes to a child, are another impact, and one that is even harder to account for. Take a simple example of waking up in time for class. You can have a college freshman who was taught by their parents to be up on time. You can also have a college freshman who always depended upon their parents to wake them up and is thus oversleeping. The former seems more in line with the true potential, while the latter is a temporary benefit from parents. A kid who taught themselves how to wake barely on time will do worse than a kid whose parents makes sure they wake up with time to spare when parents are present, but if the parents don't instill the values of waking up on time to the latter child, then in college the former one will do better.

applecrazy 7y ago

This. I’m a college freshman and took the SAT and PSAT when in high school. I’m also not a minority. While I and my parents could have afforded the expensive prep courses the students around me were taking , I decided to skip these and focus purely on solo prep. Across the PSAT and SAT, I spent a total of $50 for my prep–a $35 dollar, thick book of SAT problems, and a $15 PSAT prep book. Technically, you don’t even need to buy these books—many libraries offer the books to borrow for free. Just going through those books and drilling incessantly on weekends and in my free time was enough to get me a 1520 on the PSAT (the max score, which helped in gaining merit scholarships, which is the reason I go to school for free right now), and a 1540 on the SAT (99th percentile). I also used Khan Academy extensively, which provides free prep sponsored by Collegeboard. In my opinion, prep courses are just a means for unmotivated students to put in the same amount of work as a highly diligent, self-studying student. There’s plenty of free and relatively inexpensive resort resources out there nowadays, it just requires time and attention (which sadly a lot of my generation doesn’t have).

3131s 7y ago
No one even told us at my school that the PSAT would count for national merit scholarships, which ended up saving me $20,000 on university tuition over four years.

threatofrain 7y ago

If you want a less gameable test you eventually just end up testing for IQ, but do we want to promote mere intelligence vs what you’ve done with it?