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Comment by erdos4d | Hacker News Reader

The math part is not so bad, but I definitely would agree that the verbal/written strongly favors students educated in affluent private schools. You just not going to get that vocab prep down in a poor public school with a lot of minorities. The SAT tests in the language of the US white elite.

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> The SAT tests in the language of the US white elite.

How do Asians manage to do well on it? And let me guess, you’re specifically talking about the analogy question that refers to a regatta? That question is repeatedly trotted out as evidence of the SAT’s bias but it, or anything similar, hasn’t been found in the test in decades…

The conclusion of course, in their minds at least, would be that Asians are white. Translate it to academic-speak and you would get something like "Asian benefit from white supremacy"

They go to the same private schools, have friends with, and also speak the language of the aforementioned white elite. I bet the few black kids who go to those schools, have those friends, and come from families who speak that language do pretty damn well too.

It tests in grammatically correct English. Libraries are free. The internet exists. You can't expect a college to cover basic English writing that should have been learned over a lifetime.

Reading books targeted at adults will help immensely with vocabulary. It's fun, too. I read a lot of scifi in high school.

I suspect that the only way to get a large vocabulary is to do a lot of reading. Certainly, watching TV won't do it (TV vocabulary is around 3000 words).

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