Yikes! (SAT scores)

[markj11]

I must be in back to school mode, as I go back on Tuesday 9/1, but I found this article, just out today, which seems to support Art's earlier position that scores were dipping because more students, who would have typically not taken the exam previously, are now taking it.

mark, the ACT has gained a ton of ground on the SAT in terms of number of students taking it, and how it is viewed, especially in more recent years.

EDIT -- Here's a little piece from Kaplan about the ACT/SAT for ya, mark.

The thing about the ACT is that you must be a good/fast reader.

Thanks, I think I would have been better off with "critical thinking and problem solving" SAT. I'm not a fast reader. I dominated the math even though half of it was reading problems. I scored about even with a monkey on the reading section. I also didn't too well in science since it was entirely reading, even-though I went through the highest level of science in high school and also took a college level science class.

[bigh0rt]

Mad, here's one of the more extreme (and most popular) questions that was heavily criticized for the cultural bias. It was an analogy question that linked 'oarsman' to 'regatta' in which 53% of white students got correct compared to 22% of minority students, with claims being that it was geared to the wealthier families that would be more familiar with that type of sport, etc. This is one of the major reasons that these types of questions were eliminated completely in 2005.

The 'SAT Optional Movement' continues to pick up steam, and I just now read that begun way back in 1984 with Bates College. Other more well known colleges that now have either made the SAT optional or removed completely from their admissions can be found here. Some pretty strong schools on there, including NYU.

[Madison]

Anyway, I tried to keep it short (meaning I didn't open up all the holes in it), but that paper really isn't very good. A college or institute of higher learning really made you read that paper H0rt? Figured they'd pick something with less obvious flaws. Then again, maybe they wanted to hear people read it, think for themselves, find the flaws, and point them out...

It was purposefully chosen as one of the centerpiece articles for a town meeting style forum debate, where different groups were assigned sides to defend. It was meant to be able to be picked at. That's why I posted it for you to read, as well.

Ahhh, that makes sense then.

I must be in back to school mode, as I go back on Tuesday 9/1,

Slackers. My kid started Monday.

Mad, here's one of the more extreme (and most popular) questions that was heavily criticized for the cultural bias. It was an analogy question that linked 'oarsman' to 'regatta' in which 53% of white students got correct compared to 22% of minority students, with claims being that it was geared to the wealthier families that would be more familiar with that type of sport, etc. This is one of the major reasons that these types of questions were eliminated completely in 2005.

The 'SAT Optional Movement' continues to pick up steam, and I just now read that begun way back in 1984 with Bates College. Other more well known colleges that now have either made the SAT optional or removed completely from their admissions can be found here. Some pretty strong schools on there, including NYU.

So knowing about boats is considered "cultural bias"? Pretty sure they still teach about boats in school, like the Mayflower for one big example (EDIT: Actually, I can think of a ton of examples of boats and oarsman we were exposed to in school)? How sad. You'd think having a wide array of knowledge is important, and something colleges and businesses would want their students/employees to have. And the only way to know what those students/employees know is to test them. No win for anyone if questions like that are removed.

Seems a lot like racism. Dang near anything can be tossed in there on a whim.

Getting rid of the SAT's makes sense in today's world of "no winners, no losers", so I'm not surprised. Honestly, it wouldn't bother me too much if they get rid of the SAT's. It's still not too tough to figure out which kids have intelligence and which ones do not. Most colleges/businesses don't have the time to really get to know people ahead of time though, so I don't envy them in the least if the SAT goes out the window.

[bleach168]

Uh, I thought the test was designed so the median performance on the test resulted in a score ~500

This is what I thought too. Also, I believe the test has been dumbed down a bit in the last decade so that the median score remains around 500. A 1000 score in 1993 would be the equivalent on a 1100 score today.

I took the GRE exam a few months ago and I can say a few things,

1) The prep course I took was extremely helpful.
2) It's a computerized test which adjusts the question difficulty based on how well you are doing. In the end, you'll end up getting half right and half wrong no matter how smart or dumb you are. It's an incredibly accurate method as there was very little variation in scores in the 4 practice tests I took and the real test.
3) The test is heavily weighted towards native english speakers. Two-thirds of the reading portion was vocab with only one-third being reading comprehension. Many of the math questions were word problems written in english and could easily be problematic for non-english speakers.
4) They are slowly introducing fill-in-the-blank questions in the math portion.
5) The written portion is interesting to have, but is extremely long and requires scoring which can be costly and subjective. This is where I think scores would fluctuate greatly as one would score much higher if given the right topic.
6) From the way the test is given, I think cheating is a very real possibility.

[KCollins1304]

With the verbal part of the test I would get so tired of reading those stupid little paragraphs where they would ask you like 5-8 questions about a little article. I'm not sure if it was a good strategy or not, but by the time I took the SAT the last time I didn't read them at all and only read the parts referenced by the question.

[fezzik]

1,200 seemed to be the measuring stick for college back in my day. Get 1,200 or better and you'd be accepted anywhere and get some scholarship money as well (the higher the score, the bigger the scholarship of course). 1,200 always seemed low in my opinion. Makes 1,000 (or 1,500 on the new version) seem absurdly low to me.

My recollection is a bit different, although I think I'm a bit younger than you (graduated high school in '97). 1,200 wouldn't get you in "anywhere", but regardless...if 1,200 or better got you in "anywhere and get [you] some scholarship money as well", wouldn't that imply that 1,200 was significantly above average?

[Madison]

1,200 seemed to be the measuring stick for college back in my day. Get 1,200 or better and you'd be accepted anywhere and get some scholarship money as well (the higher the score, the bigger the scholarship of course). 1,200 always seemed low in my opinion. Makes 1,000 (or 1,500 on the new version) seem absurdly low to me.

My recollection is a bit different, although I think I'm a bit younger than you (graduated high school in '97). 1,200 wouldn't get you in "anywhere", but regardless...if 1,200 or better got you in "anywhere and get [you] some scholarship money as well", wouldn't that imply that 1,200 was significantly above average?

Yeah, I'm a little older. Not much, but a little.

Didn't cross my mind at all that 1,200 was significantly above average. Maybe a tiny fraction above the average, but I figured 1,200 was the average because some colleges would give a small amount of scholarship money for that score, but not all of them. A "discount" to make them seem cheaper, make the person feel like they are getting a deal, or that they are special in some way, like buying a car. No one pays sticker price for a car (well, very few do). I also had friends that were older than me getting into college with much lower scores than 1,200 each year. So 1,200 didn't even seem like a hardline "requirement", it just seemed to help to at least get that score. And not one college gave me a number higher than 1,200. In hindsight, maybe that was due to my resume, but I really don't know, I never considered that at the time and really had no reason to given what I watched and heard while in high school. I also didn't bother with Harvard or Yale, just didn't seem to be my cup of tea. Probably the most "prestigious" school I talked to was Duke, and they were right in line with the same 1,200 that everyone else was quoting. Colleges are in the business of making money, so it is in their interest to get people on their campus. If their standards are set "significantly" above the average, they'd go out of business due to a lack of qualified applicants. The market allows for a few colleges to set higher standards of course, which in turn makes their degrees a bit more valuable, but the market doesn't allow for all colleges to do it. A more extreme example would be all colleges only accepting valedictorians. Not enough to go around. A handful might get away with it, but a large portion of the colleges would go bankrupt due to a lack of qualified applicants if that were the requirement. So no, I never considered 1,200 to be all that special, and certainly didn't think of it as "significantly above average" at all.

[Grounded Polo]

I graduated high school in '03. I got a 1040 on the SAT, got into a university not named Phoenix, and even got a pretty good job paying much more than 30k. Imagine that.

[bigh0rt]

So no, I never considered 1,200 to be all that special, and certainly didn't think of it as "significantly above average" at all.

But it was then, and still is.

[Mugrila]

Reading this has been pretty interesting, I had always thought the average scores had been increasing, but I think I was confusing that with just the increasing college averages due to larger graduating classes. I was in the 1300s when I took it in 05, but didn't remember being much higher than my incoming class average.