Haha. Interesting that you mention the ACT. I took the ACT before a home football game, score a point or two above average and then joined my team right as we ran onto the field. When I saw the results they were similar. Math was by far the worst section.
I took the ACT on a lark my sophomore year of high school. I scored a 29. I also attended one of the top high schools in the nation.
When I was registering for classes in college, my advisor kept trying to put me in Trigonometry or Pre-calculus (I can't remember). Because my ACT score in math said that's what I needed. I took the ACT while I was taking Geometry and Algebra II, so yeah, my math was probably weak. I tried explaining to them that my high school transcript shows I've taken up to Calculus. They wouldn't hear it. I refused to register for any sort of math below Calculus.
Eventually, they told me to go talk to the head of the math department. I told them fine. I went down there all prepared to make my case. As I started to make my case, he saw my transcript, said "Oh, <SCHOOL NAME REDACTED>. What class do you want to take?"
He didn't care about my transcript in the opposite way. I probably could have registered for 300 or 400 level math courses.
For the record, I practiced math the most, writing second and literature last and scored exactly in that order. I also tracked my progress before and after practice and I got dramatically better. I really don’t think the SAT measures anything useful other than how well someone can solve SAT problems.
I think there are a lot cynics here, but they should take the test before you really understand why SAT/ACT is stupid as an admission req.
Source: Took the test
I did very well on both tests in high school without much cramming (I skimmed one study book from the library), and scored something like 90th percentile when I took the ACT in middle school.
Whether this is correlated to anything important in real life is an entirely separate question.
My high school required students to take the ASVAB in addition to the ACT (SAT wasn't offered, so I had to go to a testing center for it).
I know a guy who honestly tried on the math section. He got the single point for signing his name, but missed all the questions. The first question is "2+2".
As someone who nearly aced both, the ACT is a noticeably better test. The SAT has a lot of dumb and predictable tricks involved. The ACT requires more actual ability.
I've never taken the SAT, but here's what I think about the ACT:
It tests the smaller of two things: your test-taking ability and your "knowledge." "Knowledge" in this case is what you have learned and retained through high school. I am being gracious by throwing test-taking ability in there, because I'm not entirely convinced there really is such a thing. I only took the ACT once, as a senior, and scored a 32 (out of 36), so I certainly hadn't specifically prepared for the type of test. I just took the test, and the questions I knew the answers to, I got right, the others I got wrong. But since almost everyone else seems to agree that being bad at test-taking can make you "choke" and score lower than what you should, I will concede that your ACT test score represents the lower of those two attributes.
Not sure about the SAT, and maybe the test has changed since I took it, but the ACT was mostly a knowledge & skills test. Math: did you pay attention through at least high school trig? Reading: how literate are you? English: how well do you understand the mechanics of SWE? Science: Can you read intentionally-shitty graphs to extract the correct information (yes, seriously, that's what it was, not anything to do with science, really) and so on.
Are there really that many kids getting perfect scores?
I got a pretty low/average score, but took the test early in junior year so I hadn't taken some of the more advanced math courses yet. I never took it again since I got into everywhere I applied to (didn't apply to ivy league, obviously). Seemed like most other kids I knew did similarly with the smartest kids maybe 150 points higher (2400 time-frame). Nobody I know got a perfect score, or even close to it.
Edit: man, after talking about this I want to see what my score was exactly. No way am I paying $30 for an archived score though. I want to say it was only 1200/1600 (the schools only wanted 2 of the sections). But I'm not sure I trust my memory for something so inconsequential from that long ago.
Extra edit: found my old score report. It's worse than I thought. The writing was 570 (74th percentile) and math was 510 (47th percentile). I'm a lot dumber than I remember.
Most people who go to Harvard have to get very high scores on the SAT/ACT, which include math sections that are of, at least, remedial math difficulty.
1. Test optional - Students can still submit SAT and ACT scores. So if you get a perfect score you can, and probably should, submit your test score and it will look good and the admission committee will weigh that.
2. The issue with standardized tests is not if the SAT or ACT is objective or not. The issue is what those tests objectively measure. Ends up mostly family income and, well, ones ability to take standardized tests. It is like the 40 yard dash in football. Everyone obsesses about it as an objective measure, but it doesn’t really mean too much one way or another as it pertains to football.
As an aside, has anyone gone back and tried taking a sample SAT test? If you have not exposed yourself to the unique framing of standardized test questions in awhile it is quite jarring if you are not used to it.
The fundamental issue is that crushing the SAT/ACT is more of a reflection of “mom and dad got me good tutoring or prep” than it is intellectual merit.
I “weaseled” my way into CMU via athletic admissions (I was an actual athlete, not a Lori Laughlin style one), but did very well at CMU once I got there. People who aced the SATs did not do as well. Fwiw I still did okay, 32 ACT score, but there were 35/36’s around.
IOW, prediction of academic success is hard; career success harder. These standardized tests don’t add much.
I'm surprised to read that people who did better on the SAT did worse with the bat-and-ball question in the article. That sounds like exactly the sort of simple trap I'd expect to find in an SAT math question.
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