mowmow721

I see this excuse pop up so much... "I'm just not a good test taker...". Whether it's for the SAT, AP, Subject Tests, or ACT. So many people will just validate low scores with the classic "I'm not a good tester".

I don't understand- Does the pressure of sitting down with a College Board packet in front of someone cause them to freak out and lose all their wits? Not likely. Is there some kind of secret to bubbling a grid no one knows of? Then how can you be a "bad test taker?"

Those classic "tricks" like skipping hard questions won't get you very far, even if you know them. If you really need to skip hard questions on the SAT I, god help you on getting over a 700. Those stupid "ballparking" and "narrowing down" tricks won't help you much at all, if you want any kind of decent score. Especially since guessing is always penalized.

I mean, I could be wrong. But I think being a "bad test taker" just means you aren't prepared. I'm not arguing about the validity of these tests in being able to test their specific subjects, or the IQ for that matter- for all I know, they might be terribly written and completely useless. I'm just saying- if someone wasn't prepared, it's no fault of the test. He didn't know the information. Period.

Anyway, it should be "I didn't study/prepare enough." or "I do not understand the information easily enough." Tests are there to test how much you know about the subject they are testing, and standardized testing is no exception. If you aren't good at assimilating information for tests, well tough luck, it means you don't know thoroughly what was being tested. We don't all pop out scoring 2400s and doing super-modeling as an extracurricular.