800 on the SAT's

[wilt the stilt]

I went to an honor's ceremony last night. There were upwards of 25 perfect scores. I was very surprised there were so many. When I grew up there were very few 800's. We did not prep. We were told to go to our high school and take the test. All this prep work has devalued the 800. What's your take? It makes it very hard to differentiate students.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Good point. Abolish the SAT.

"SAT" really means "Silly-Assed Test".

--d!

[chemp]

2. 800?

not 1800? Perfect is 2400 right?

Little Bush suppose to have gotten 1200 for crissake!

[DireStrike]

22. You ARE aware there are two SAT scoring systems?

The new system from around 2002 is out of 2400. The old system was out of 1600.

[Oregone]

3. SAT scores measure how well you can take the SAT

More and more, students (especially the advanced ones) are merely being taught how to take tests.

[Ron Green]

6. It's some of both.

You have to be pretty sharp in the first place to score 800, but I agree the whole thing has become a "trained pony" process that on balance probably doesn't enhance higher education.

[Oregone]

10. I don't disagree about that

Im not saying high-scorers aren't generally intelligent. But, in my old high school, the more advanced students were put in "college prep" classes where all we essentially did half the time was learned vocab and comprehension specifically for the SAT (and we would do SAT practice). So, while you have to be somewhat bright to have the teachers even start training you, you are still being trained. My old school didn't bother with most of the other kids (I don't know what they do now). In retrospect, doesn't seem real fair to me.

Id argue someone who scores in their 700s with no training may well be smarter than a trained pony. Who knows though. Its not completely objective for measuring things like that.

Buuuut....you gotta start somewhere. Where is it? Simple scores at least create a baseline ballpark for colleges to start investigating kids.

[Ron Green]

15. Right. I have to laugh when I hear this test described as a "predictor of success in college"

when in my case, at least, a high SAT score didn't predict my preference for partying my freshman year and ending up in the Army in what would have been my sophomore year.

[Foolacious]

28. How long ago was that?

I was in high school in the early and mid '70s. There was NO prep for SAT tests. There was for Advanced Placement, but nothing special for SATs. We just went and took them. The max was 800 on math and 800 on English. I got the highest scores in the school, but still not 800s. Is an 800 easier now? (There is a third category now, is that right? I live in Canada now and my kids didn't take any such tests.)

[Oregone]

29. I was in high school in the mid-late 90s

And now they have SIM and AIM tests they constantly shove down these kids throats. In fact, all they have to do to pass certain classes is pass the standard test. Thats new since I graduated

I don't think 800 is any easier now than before. I just think people practice more and learn the tricks to it all. The math section becomes practically memorization (I only missed a few).

I live in Canada now too. Who knows what my kids will end up taking. Hopefully it wont be as bad as the states though.

[TheCoxwain]

4. Standardized tests can be gamed.... and they do not reflect the true academic potential

However .... they have their place. They should only be one of many factors in the admissions process.

[Tektonik]

5. On the SAT II's i got an 800 in chem

:shrug:

[LeftyMom]

7. Unless they've totally changed it 1600 is a perfect combined score

I assume 800 means a perfect score on one section? I can see that, the verbal really isn't difficult at all. I only missed a few, and I didn't do any test prep nonsense.

[Oregone]

11. I think they changed it and now there is an essay section

[LeftyMom]

16. Okay I checked. Perfect is 2400 now. Each section is 800 points.

One perfect section really isn't that unlikely. I nearly managed it on the verbal section with no particular effort and no special test prep.

[rcrush]

8. I took the ACT

Another useless test.

[wilt the stilt]

19. ACT's are in the midwest.

I actually think(at least on the east coast)there is a lot less prep and it may be a truer test. A couple of my friends scored very high. ihr ha an 800. both are very successful their chosen professions. One has a good 20 books in the advanced reading section at all the elementary schools in the U.S.( well known) and the other has a play opening off Broadway this month. One thing that can't be measured in elation to success in a est is persistence and picking yourself up when you are down

[zazen]

9. prep plus Asian culture and realllly higher standards have done that here in Triangle

Sorry about the stereotype, but it bears out in our experience here in the Triangle region. My daughters have had Asian classmates (Indian, Chinese, Korean) etc. since they were in preschool and those parents push those children HARD. Makes me look like the nice guy for only pushing my daughter harder than all the WASP moms around here, so I like it. But I think 1/3? of the scholarships to the universities here go to Asians, and they were heavily represented in the TIP program where you take the SAT when you're 12, of which my WASPY daughter is a part.

Standardized tests measure how well you will do in schools centered on standardized tests. That's about the most predictive aspect of it I've seen. There's so much valuable information it can't measure.

[moc]

14. Agree with your stereotype.

Lots of Asians in our northern suburb of Dallas, and I see that pushing of kids in many situations. Generally, I see it a little less in the southeast Asian (e.g., Indian, Pakistani, etc.) parents than east Asian.

My daughter is 12yo and plays clarinet. She did very well in her first all-region competition, placing 8th chair in the top band with only one seventh grader seated one chair higher than she. When she went to all region clinic, she was astounded to discover she was one of only 2-3 non-Asian players in the entire woodwind section.

[pnwmom]

12. It's based on a percentage, as it always was. But there are many more students

simply taking the test. And, depending on where you grew up, that could affect the number of students at a ceremony too.

When I grew up there were no ceremonies for perfect scores (I had a friend with 800's). I wouldn't have known how many others there were. But I know there are many more test takers today, and both the number and the fraction of perfect scores varies from state to state.

Also, something to keep in mind when you hear about people's scores: I knew a student who got an 800 in math a few years ago, having made no mistakes. However, if she HAD made just a single mistake, her score would have been 730. And she would have been exactly the same student, with exactly the same math ability.

Anything over 700 is very high. Between 750 and 800 the score difference is meaningless.

[Spike89]

13. Semi-useful tests

According to the SAT site,math and english (basically) are worth up to 800 points. Back in my day, the combined score was typically used when discussing your results, i.e., Bush got a 1200 or an average of 600 on each part which is slightly above the mean. Prepping always seemed silly to me, we didn't do it in the 70s. But, colleges put way too much emphasis on it, so students were kinda forced to take the prep courses.

I aced the math part back then (and did real well on language too). Despite not being very interested in Math during my high school days (I didn't even take a math class my senior year), my college advisor suggested I jump right into honors calculus based solely on my 800 SAT score. Getting into that class got me bumped into honors chemistry. I was so over my head and miserable that it almost ruined college for me. Just because I can do basic math and algebra in my head pretty fast (what the SAT really tests) didn't mean I have the foundation for abstract math.

[tammywammy]

17. I did no prep

And I think I got around a 1250 back in 1999.

But I had a lot of friends that did the prep classes. I didn't care that much. LOL

[JimGinPA]

18. One Of My Best Friend's Son Got A Perfect Score On His SAT...

This was five years ago and was a pretty big deal around here at the time. He graduated from Notre Dame last year, having had a full scholarship (and he virtually had his choice of top colleges)and is getting ready to go to grad school now. The kid had always been an honor student and his Mom is a public school teacher, he attended Catholic schools though.


My son is taking the SAT on Saturday, but I have the feeling he'll fall a bit short of perfection.

[ddeclue]

20. Read more and party less.

I scored 1410 on the test - 750 on the math and 660 on the verbal because I take learning seriously while all my friends partied through high school.

Doug D.

On Edit: I didn't prep, I didn't bother with the PSAT's. I just went out there and did it because I had actually bothered to learn something first.

[Occam Bandage]

21. The proportion of perfect scores has not increased, as the scores are weighted.

Rather, there are simply far more people who take the test, including quite a few people who have no business doing so. That makes it much easier to get an 800 for the smart kids.

[Iris]

24. who is to say who has "business" taking the SAT?

I mean, who gets to decide that?

[Occam Bandage]

27. Kids who do not have any intent whatsoever of going to college,

but who are made to do so by schools or parents.

[wilt the stilt]

26. wrong

here is a link. this is the story
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/02/us/sat-with-familiar-anxiety-but-new-higher-scoring.html



S.A.T. With Familiar Anxiety but New (Higher) Scoring
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: Sunday, April 2, 1995



After three hours of suffering through the S.A.T. yesterday morning, Isaac Hurwitz and Geoffrey Fischer stood near the Tribeca Bridge whooping and exchanging high-fives. And for the first time since leaving the testing room at Stuyvesant High School in Battery Park City, their classmate Stephanie Xie allowed herself a smile.

" 'Stalwart' is to 'cause' as 'adherent' is to 'party,' " she rejoiced. "Yeah! I had that too!"

If they were re-enacting the relief celebrated by millions of high school students before them upon completion of the nation's most widely used college entrance exam, the three juniors from Hunter College High School, like other 230,000 students across the country who took the Scholastic Assessment Tests yesterday, were leaving a new academic playing field.

Forever, an asterisk will appear next to their scores: the average student got an extra 100 points just for showing up yesterday.

The College Board, the New York nonprofit company that oversees the test, has adjusted its scoring system for the first time since 1941, when the average score was 500 math and 500 verbal, the midpoint of the 200-to-800 grading scale. Since then, scores have steadily declined, to an average of 424 in the verbal portion of the test and 479 in the math portion.















http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/02/us/sat-with-familiar-anxiety-but-new-higher-scoring.html

[Toucano]

23. The current test is a vastly different test than the one I took.

All standardized tests have flaws, and should not be weighted too heavily.

Still, doing well on the test is something to be celebrated.

[kwassa]

25. My friend got 1595 out of 1600, back in the old days.

and an 800 on a chem achievement test.

went to Cornell, became an oncologist. His father and mother were both scientists.

[Blue_In_AK]

30. Back in the Dark Ages when I took the SATs

we had no prep at all. You just went in and took the test. I scored mid-600s in both math and language, which I was happy with, even though I ended up graduating 13th in my class of over 500 students and probably should have scored higher. We had one perfect score in our class, a young man who later went to Cal Tech graduating with the highest average of any student there up to that time and who became a world-renowned nuclear physicist. I do believe all the prep skews the scores and that a perfect score means less now than before.