Community Conversations
Want to talk about something? Ask about something? Let us know, and we’ll post your comment/question and a reply.
Are Only Long Things Difficult?
We were sent an article that pointed out that the longest Reading passage within the current SAT® “is only 150 words”. This was cited as evidence that the test is “not tough” anymore.
So, only long things are difficult to comprehend?
Reading a sentence about the morphological novelty of echinoderms or a 14-word piece of dialogue from a Shakespeare play cannot pose a challenge?
Hmmm. We’re wondering a bit how much the person who wrote that article really knows about the current exam and what our students are facing. Noticing that a particular question type is shorter feels a bit superficial of an analysis.
We haven’t word-counted things yet, but that 150 number sounds right. When the SAT® officially switched to its current format in March of 2024, one of the more noticeable changes was indeed that the traditional long Reading Comp passages were gone.
Our resident expert(who will be teaching free Zoom sessions this week!) has also trained students on the LSAT, the entrance exam for law schools. Two-thirds of the current format of this exam is tied to blurbs that are the same length as current SAT® Reading blurbs. Does the brevity of these questions also make the LSAT “not tough”?
(Thank you to Bill U. from Austin, TX for sending us the article!)
Applying Test Optional
Colleges know the challenge that the SAT® presents. This is relevant to our conversation here about applying test optional.
We have been asked many times over the years about the validity/viability of applying test optional. Our general answer is pretty simple: it is clearly a legitimate option. A different question to consider is whether applying test optional is the most advantageous path to take. Consider this scenario.
A college is comparing two candidates from two different states. Both applicants have virtually the same G.P.A. They both are active, whether it be with sports, volunteer work, school clubs, etc. But, one of them has an SAT® score of 1200(which puts a student roughly within the 75% percentile nationally, meaning she or he is generally within the top quarter of testers) and the other applicant is applying test optional.
Earning a top quarter score is not something that most of us can do just by strolling in to the exam. Colleges know this.
In short, clearly students applying test optional are admitted to amazing institutions, such as the University of California(U.C.) schools and Wake Forest. What we wonder is how many more applicants are being admitted from the non-test optional pool compared to the test optional pool of applicants.
When in Doubt, Guess Blindly?
We just finished writing something for our students, and we thought we’d take a moment to post this corollary as well.
The idea of when in doubt, guess C stuck around for a good bit of time(and maybe is even still floating around). We’re here to tell you it was kind of never a thing.
We’re also here to pass along practical advice that you can pass along to someone testing: a pure guess is better than a tainted “educated” guess.
Many questions are written so that people will be influenced toward particular wrong answers. And so, sometimes, it is actually better to give essentially zero attention to a question and just guess blindly, making it less likely to being unduly influenced toward a careful crafted wrong answer. This may feel like an odd skill to potentially cultivate but this process is a rather odd/unique beast.
Some tester on some past test picked a bunch of C’s and got a better score than may have been expected, giving rise to a folktale-ish maxim. We are better informed. Goodbye ‘when in doubt, guess C’. Hello to seeing the power of a blind guess.
Why Some Colleges Went Test Optional
Some colleges went test-optional not because the SAT® wasn’t deemed to still be a strong criterion to be weighed. The issue was that the standardized test process was deemed economically unfair. We agreed.
We can talk a lot about the content side of the test. But, there are two other direct things we want to acknowledge here, two things that colleges have acknowledged the reality of for decades.
1. There is a how-we-can-handle-pressure aspect to this process that many colleges have likely always been interested in getting a sense of via students’ scores.
2. There is a willingness to train for something that colleges have also long valued gaining a sense of.
Everyone who knows a lot about the SAT(which certainly includes colleges) knows that nearly all of us are compelled to make time to prepare for the test in order to reach scores that better reflect what we’re capable of producing.
This reality was butting up against another reality: many students, without comfortable access to excellent test training, have been at a disadvantage. We are very interested to see what happens as we help remove this barrier.
There’s quite a bit more to talk about here, and we’d love to move in directions you would like us to go. So, let us know and we’ll keep these conversations going.
Neutralizing Possible State Bias
One reason an exam like the SAT® exists is to give colleges a less-subjective measurement.
Even within the same state, it can be difficult to know whether an ‘A’ in a math class within one school is comparable to an ‘A’ in a math class within a different school. Or, is one school’s ‘A’ better or worse than another school’s 92? Add different states to the mix and things can be even tougher to discern.
We typed “which state ranks last in education” in to Google and got back a response of West Virginia. Does this mean that colleges view an ‘A’ from a WV high school differently than an ‘A’ from a NJ high school? Whether any representative from any college would ever say so, the reality is, they might!
Enter a national test like the SAT, one that gives students an opportunity to neutralize potential state bias. A 1200 earned in Maine(shoutout Brenda!) is the same as a 1200 earned in Hawaii(shoutout Sabrina!).
Does a student from California have a better chance of being accepted to a college in Pennsylvania than a student from Mississippi(Google’s current answer for second-to-last)? As we may not be likely to get a direct answer from someone in authority, we put it to you to better control the situation on your own.
