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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Let me reiterate: that requires for it occur to a student that you even can increase your SAT score.

That remains non-obvious. After all, IQ tests aren't supposed to be something you can prepare for. So why should the SAT be, if it's this kind of supposedly holistic aptitude test? Why isn't "school overall" all the possible preparation you could do?

Again, the difficulty isn't primarily in getting the extra resources. It's in even knowing that it's something extra resources would help with at all.

So the idea that there's "no exuse" is awfully judgmental. It's not just what kids don't know -- it's what they don't even know they don't know. You're not going to Google something if you'd never even suspect it existed, and you shouldn't be blamed for that.

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> Let me reiterate: that requires for it occur to a student that you even can increase your SAT score.

Maybe, but this is so far from my experience, I'm having trouble accepting it.

There's an important test coming up. Surely the default, baseline assumption must be that you should prepare for it? How could anything else be true? Everyone knows getting some practice in makes you better at something, right?

I guess your answers to all of these questions are "no", and I accept that, I'm not arguing, but man, this is weird.

I guess there some things the school do (unarguably) need to tell kids: the SAT is coming up and it's important. My impression is that schools don't always do that.

I had a similar experience as OP. Maybe you can't imagine it because you went to a competitive high school where kids talked a lot about stuff like that?

I barely tried and was in the top 1% of my class yet I didn't prepare for the PSAT or SAT that I can recall. Maybe I did do a few practice SAT tests, but it definitely was preached that the SAT was an aptitude test so you couldn't study for it.

I ended up getting $60k in scholarships mostly from my PSAT results but at the time I took the test I had no idea what was riding on the results. I thought it was literally just "Practice" SAT.

> I had a similar experience as OP. Maybe you can't imagine it because you went to a competitive high school where kids talked a lot about stuff like that?

The reason I probably can't imagine this stuff is that I grew up in the UK, where exams are exams, and everyone knows you can study for them (even if they don't).

The idea of a set of exams being pitched as an aptitude test you can't study for (when in fact you definitely can study for aptitude tests) is weird.

I guess children in many public schools in America are being failed on such a basic level - not being told what the tests they're taking mean and whether you can study - that I had no idea.

> it definitely was preached that the SAT was an aptitude test so you couldn't study for it.

This seems like you were just straight up lied to, and is sad.

It seems like you maybe just don't know what the SAT is.

It's not an exam like any other high school exam, it's totally unique. It's not meant to be studied for -- it's meant to give a general overview of your total scholastic ability. (It's also not even run by the school system, it's a private company that you have to pay in order to take the test.)

But the reality is that you can "game" it by learning patterns in the types of questions they ask, and how to give the answer they're "looking for" on the verbal section, when the correct answer is often highly subjective for questions on analogies and reading comprehension. And you can also focus on a very narrow subset of words and math problems that tend to statistically recur. There's also literally strategy around when you should guess vs. when you should leave an answer blank, depending on your confidence. These are what test prep focuses on -- not on improving your general scholastic aptitude in any way.

So it's not studying for an exam in any normal sense. It's more like "gaming" it.

As for children being failed on such a basic level in many public schools in America -- on that, you couldn't be more correct, sadly.

> There's also literally strategy around when you should guess vs. when you should leave an answer blank, depending on your confidence.

This hasn't been true for almost a decade, and now you can guess on any question.

The tests are a lot different than school exams based on coursework that you study for. Those exams you are taught content and told what will be on the test and how to prepare. There may be weekly quizzes, a midterm, a final, essays, graded homework. You receive back graded each quiz and exam that has marked exactly what you got wrong so you can focus on areas you have problems with for the final.

With standardized state tests, IQ tests, SAT/ACT, you don't get any feed back. For standardized state test you spend a lot of time on the test and are never given any feedback at all. When I was in school I just stopped taking them. I would sit there and not fill in anything. Why should I? The SAT was more of the same. I would not receive any feedback about what I got wrong and I have no idea what the questions will be or what I will be tested on. A lot of students then say why bother and just sit and fill in all A bubbles or leave their sheets blank. There is no point in studying for such a test as you have no idea what will be on the test.

Now the ACT is better since they have a test question bank and if you take it enough times you'll see most of the math and grammar questions. But the reading stuff is all random and lots of the questions arbitrary with even the authors of the excerpts used saying they have no idea what the correct answer is supposed to be about "what was the author's intent". Still how many students know any of this? Most teachers don't, fewer students.

With "high stakes" state standardized exams so many schools in the US spend most time in class drilling and prepping for these that everyone loses interest. It is incredibly boring prepping for this stuff and they push test prep for over 10-13 years, badgering the students about how important it is for a test they will get no feedback from, and which is taking up the majority of time in over a decade of state education. Everyone sane checks out and gives up.

That’s right. And guess who does know that SAT prep is a thing and takes full advantage of it? If you said “rich kids and their parents,” you win the prize.

Not just the rich. I was an immigrant kid, and knew plenty of other immigrant kids. None of our families had much money, but we all had a do-or-die attitude about education and the SAT. You can bet we all knew about prep options, scholarships, etc. and we milked every advantage for all it was worth.

In my public school, the SAT was never discussed during school. Not once, until the test was announced, the week before. No other information, besides “The SAT is next week”. This was after a long stretch of standardized testing that happens in CA schools. It’s definitely something you had to know/find out about, outside of everything. This was in a well off community in California, US.

I think immigrants as a group self-select for "determination to improve" to a certain extent, and probably teach that outlook to their children.

Would that mean that pouring marketing dollars for test prep awareness to low income kids and parents could be an effective intervention?

So what if they call themselves an aptitude test? Believing what it says on the label is naive. I prefer to think of it as Jordan Peterson would say: it's a dragon guarding the treasure you wish to obtain. Your goal is to find a way to slay it. Family money can help, but I can tell you from experience that it's not a requirement. Some kids fully devoted themselves to the slaying of this dragon; others had a more "whatever happens, happens" attitude.

And when schools bring you in to read this comment out to the entire school in the auditorium, perhaps then you may blame the "attitude" of the kids, instead of the (highly class-based) environment they were brought up in.

>Let me reiterate: that requires for it occur to a student that you even can increase your SAT score.

If you are a high school student and the possibility of increasing your score doesn't even occur to you, I would suggest that college isn't for you.

Would you study for an IQ test? Perhaps, but then is that fair? If you do, what is actually being measured? Certainly not IQ anymore.

Maybe it doesn't occur to students that they should attempt to increase their score because they have a certain innocent model of the world, perhaps one in which they put trust in educational institutions to (as they claim to do) tell them how they should best achieve personal success. If it were a valuable use of their time, surely someone would tell them?

Reminder: you are responding to a commenter who is telling you that an offhand comment literally changed their life.

If an IQ test were required for admission to university or anything else I wanted to do, you're damn right I would study. Why would I care if that is fair or if I corrupt the measurement by studying if increasing my score benefits me? The validity of the measurement is the school's problem, not mine.

It seems like you might have a history of applying adaptive behaviors, that is good.

How have you avoided maladaptive behaviors, perhaps such as procrastinating or distracting oneself with substance?

Do you believe that nature or nurture has played a larger role in your healthy response to environmental pressures?

>Would you study for an IQ test?

I'd study for any test that was consequential to my future.

>Maybe it doesn't occur to students that they should attempt to increase their score

In my opinion, if it doesn't occur to someone that they can better their score on any test by studying, then they aren't ready for college. Studying isn't some sort of arcane concept available only to the privileged few.

>Reminder: you are responding to a commenter who is telling you that an offhand comment literally changed their life.

This is Hacker News, not a struggle session. It isn't disrespectful to tell people they aren't equipped and/or ready for higher education. It is one thing to argue that some people don't have the resources to access study courses, materials or have the free time to do so (due to work requirements or living conditions), it is entirely another thing to suggest that it would never occur to a college candidate that studying for a test would improve their chances of doing well.

>because they have a certain innocent model of the world, perhaps one in which they put trust in educational institutions to (as they claim to do) tell them how they should best achieve personal success. If it were a valuable use of their time, surely someone would tell them?

Perhaps this comment will inform some potential college-bound student, who has otherwise had their life crippled by a childlike dependence on whatever information (or lack thereof) was spoon-fed to them by incompetent school authorities, that studying will help increase their test scores. That would be a win-win!

> I'd study for any test that was consequential to my future.

This makes the very large assumption that you’re aware the SAT has anything to do with your future, and that’s it’s not another one of the half dozen standardized tests that you take every year, neither of which was communicated in my public school. I’ve heard from many that my school was not unique.

I mean, in high school did it occur to you how to become a fighter pilot? College is about as far removed as flight school in some people’s lives.

> I'd study for any test that was consequential to my future.

When I was really little a teacher referred me for a Stanford-Binet test, which was administered one on one by a psychiatrist. I did not know at the time what this test was, what a psychiatrist was, or that it would be consequential to my future since I tested above the range of the test and was put into a gifted program and thus got to avoid classes with students screaming and throwing chairs.

How should I have studied for the Stanford-Binet and what would have happened to my score if I did? What resources or guides do you use when studying for an IQ test and which would you recommend as suitable for someone 5 years old?

The SAT stopped calling itself an Aptitude test 29 years ago.

If you go to school and you don't presume that your can improve your score on a test by studying, it seems unlikely that you would score high on the SAT anyways.

As a stubborn, idealistic teenager I refused to do any preparation for the SAT/ACT. I believed that I _should_ be an aptitude test so I treated it as one.

Would preparation have been helpful? Most likely. But I was happy with my >2000 score, and felt.lkke.i earned it more by not preparing.

You earned something more by not working for it? That’s a hot take

That's a snarky reading of my experience. As an aptitude test, my "working for it" was my seventeen years of learning and developing cognitive skills leading up to the test.

Can you, or anyone else, say you learned something beneficial by studying for a standardized test? Was there anything worthwhile about it sans the score?

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