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I’m 18 now and took the SAT two years ago - I scored well without the need to practice too much, but official practice is available completely for free on Khan

by raunak 5y ago

I’m 18 now and took the SAT two years ago - I scored well without the need to practice too much, but official practice is available completely for free on Khan Academy. You really don’t need to pay anything to improve on the SAT these days, and anyone arguing elsewise is misguided as to how the test actually works. And also - I agree - I never really learned “grammar rules” or the details of writing. I just learned from listening, talking, and reading many many books in elementary and middle school. To prepare for a test by memorizing vocab seems inherently the wrong approach.

dehrmann 5y ago
> You really don’t need to pay anything to improve on the SAT these days I heard something on This American Life, I think, about a "strong student" from a bad high school doing poorly on the SAT. I got the impression she hadn't prepared at all...which seems odd for a strong student when there are free resources. > memorizing vocab The College Board got called out for some of this after the "regatta" incident. It turns out rich kids were much more likely to know the term for a boat race. Oops. I'm really curious to see the outcomes of the no-SAT cohort of college students, once the 2020-2021 year is ignored, data cleaned, etc. Even if GPA was enough in 2020, it seems like it would get harder and harder to compare schools over time without a standardized test.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The only question I recall from the SAT was about analogies. It required a knowledge of the contents of various liquor drinks, like a martini. I was just a kid. I didn't hang out in bars. I had no idea what the contents of a martini were. I thought it was unfair, and was so annoyed I still recall it :-)
WalterBright 5y ago
Yup. I was taught to diagram sentences in school, but it seemed a useless skill, and I no longer recall any of it. I know if a sentence is grammatically correct or not just by reading it. There's no conscious thought process to it at all. I read a great deal as a kid, too. Mostly scifi :-) I made the mistake of attempting to learn German by memorizing. But who can remember which nouns go with der, die, or das? Not me. I bet the right way is to simply read the newspaper every day, looking up the words one doesn't know, one by one.

by raunak 5y ago

dehrmann 5y ago

> You really don’t need to pay anything to improve on the SAT these days I heard something on This American Life, I think, about a "strong student" from a bad high school doing poorly on the SAT. I got the impression she hadn't prepared at all...which seems odd for a strong student when there are free resources. > memorizing vocab The College Board got called out for some of this after the "regatta" incident. It turns out rich kids were much more likely to know the term for a boat race. Oops. I'm really curious to see the outcomes of the no-SAT cohort of college students, once the 2020-2021 year is ignored, data cleaned, etc. Even if GPA was enough in 2020, it seems like it would get harder and harder to compare schools over time without a standardized test.

WalterBright 5y ago
The only question I recall from the SAT was about analogies. It required a knowledge of the contents of various liquor drinks, like a martini. I was just a kid. I didn't hang out in bars. I had no idea what the contents of a martini were. I thought it was unfair, and was so annoyed I still recall it :-)

WalterBright 5y ago

Yup. I was taught to diagram sentences in school, but it seemed a useless skill, and I no longer recall any of it. I know if a sentence is grammatically correct or not just by reading it. There's no conscious thought process to it at all. I read a great deal as a kid, too. Mostly scifi :-) I made the mistake of attempting to learn German by memorizing. But who can remember which nouns go with der, die, or das? Not me. I bet the right way is to simply read the newspaper every day, looking up the words one doesn't know, one by one.