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Comment by throwaway6734 | Hacker News Reader

The SATs also allow for children with non parental involvement but talent to excel because it's a simple process: take a test

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Exactly. You can’t hide a high IQ, even though parental and societal involvement will always act as a multiplier on what a kid can naturally do.

You can hide a high IQ with starvation, sleep deprivation, withholding books from a child, and stress hormones from an unsafe environment.

IQ is highly correlated with nutrition. Very likely, being food-insecure has a direct causal effect of lowering IQ. It isn't a thing fixed from birth.

Do Asian Americans have better nutrition than other categories?

It would seem so. CDC statistics show that people who identify as Asian have a lower obesity rate compared to other racial and ethnic categories. Obesity is known to cause decreased cognitive function.

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

Correlated, yes. Highly correlated - I doubt it. Einstein didn't get that way by eating enough blueberries and salmon oil or whatever.

Now of course, if you are raised on a diet of sugar and lead-laced air and water, you won't reach your natural genetic potential. And if you are raised by billionaires with a live-in chef and nutritionist and tutors, in a place with squeaky-clean air and water, you might reach your full potential.

But those things merely optimize, or impede, the raw material you were born with.

So is height, and historically there have been large differences in height between the rich and poor. In modern developed countries, however, there doesn't seem to be any significant difference based on socioeconomic level. That leads me to believe that these "nutritional deficiencies" don't exist and are not what is causing any observed gap in IQ or academic achievement.

> high IQ

Therein lies the rub, the controversy mostly comes from people who reject the very premise of IQ.

Interesting.

There was quite a significant difference between my IQ results and my standardized testing scores (based on percentile rankings -- IQ => higher rankings).

(FWIW, I think both test are utter horseshit anyway.)

It's hardly simple to prep for the SAT. It requires time and money and space.

So you'd rather use a holistic process where kids with rich parents can go off to Africa and start a volunteer school or fly across the country participating in Sailing competitions?

One process has a more level playing field, the other is clearly rigged in favor of rich well connected kids.

Please stop putting words in my mouth. I said nothing of the sort.

I'd prefer we provided the food, housing, education, and healthcare that would enable anyone to succeed on the SAT by eroding the worst disadvantages some kids face.

I dont buy this argument for a second. You can buy a used sat prep book for cheap or even borrow one from a library.

Practice twice a week leading up to the test with practice tests once every two weeks.

taking a prep course will help, but thats not necessary at all.

Practicing won't teach you language and math.

practicing means practicing problems and learning ones you don’t understand. with the abundance of youtube videos/free sources on the internet, today there is no excuse except for a parent not teaching a kid what to prioritize in life imo.

I was homeless my senior year of highschool and I didn't have many adults helping me. There's a fair amount of kids on paths like mine.

It's cold comfort to be told my parents fucked up. That's true, but it doesn't actually help.

Practice is the only way to learn language and math, subjects which children are initially wholly ignorant of before learning through practice.

I keep hearing this, and I don't doubt that statistically access to test prep helps, but amongst all the tests I've seen, the SAT is still the easiest to do well in if you're willing to self study.

I got in the elite range simply by buying SAT prep books. I memorized the vocabulary, and the book had enough tricks for me to do well.

Granted, I always excelled in math in school. I, however, did not excel in English (my 10th grade score was a well deserved C). But I still did great on the verbal section, and it was primarily due to reading 1-2 SAT prep books.

If you think you're going to start prepping 1-2 months before the test and do well, it won't work. For both the SAT and the GRE I started about 12 months prior (but very low intensity - a few minutes a day). I did even better in the GRE, scoring well in the top 1% nationally.

If you treat the SAT as a possible golden ticket for your future, you'll take it seriously and start prepping early. If it's merely a "Meh, that thing I need to do to get into a college", no amount of prep will help.

Also, wanted to point out that all the people around me who did great on the SAT used only the prep books - none took one of those dedicated classes. Right or wrong, we all thought tutors and tutoring institutes were for struggling students - because none of the top students utilized them. The notion of a great student becoming even better with the help of a tutor was foreign to us. It was only years later did I learn that tutors for top students existed (basically dedicated 1:1 instruction by a "true master").

It's easier to prep for the sat than any other hoop to jump through to get into college like GPAs, various deadlines, FAFSA, knowing which clubs to join, knowing how to right a catching essay, etc

Time, yes. For space you just need a desk. And if you have an internet connection, it doesn't require any money beyond what you've already paid your ISP.

K, not every kid has access to a desk and the internet. Those things take money not every family has.

Both of these can be had for free at your local library. And to be pedantic, you don't even need a desk to study you can do it on a park table or the sidewalk. If someone doesn't have access to a desk (they're homeless?) or an internet connection, I doubt they're even taking the SAT.

I was homeless my final year of highschool, and basically homeless the year before. I took the SAT, but it was hard to figure out how. Even harder to bring myself to study rather than work.

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