"Not a good test taker..."- I don't understand. - Page 3

SimpleRules · 07-03-2009, 08:55 AM

Standardized tests do indicate how smart and clever you but not how intelligent you are. Intelligence uses other facilities such as broad or global thinking, contemplation and empathy. I do not believe that all intelligent people are super great at standardized test taking. Also scoring high on a standardized test does not mean you won't test well on classroom tests - in fact there is little correlation between the two types of testing.

If you do score high on the ACT or SAT you are smart - hats off to you! Now, try for the more difficult, life long challenge - work toward becoming intelligent, ethical people and make our world a better place, please.

The recent extraordinarily unethical scams were conceived and executed by very, very smart people - were they intelligent? No.

rogracer · 07-03-2009, 09:15 AM

Their are certainly very intelligent people that can suffer mental-blocks during periods of high stress. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with in many areas of life, but it is a condition that can be effectively managed. Unfortunately, some young people first realize this condition when they take a high-value test like the SAT for the first-time. Scoring poorly just reinforces this condition. That is one reason many schools do not value SATs as strongly as difficulty of schedule and GPA in determining an individual's preparation for college.

So there is a portion of students that are truely "bad test takers"...at least when they are subjected to high-value/stress tests like the SAT. Do some students just use the "bad test taker" as an excuse...of course they do....plenty. But you shouldn't paint all people that claim this with the same broad brush.

OHKID · 07-03-2009, 09:38 AM

Quote:

"I don't understand it either. If the student does well in school, wouldn't it imply that they are a good test taker because they still have to take times tests under pressure at school.

I suspect what's going on is one of the 2:

1. The student is getting excellent grades in a school that isn't that rigorous.

2. The student is getting excellent grades because of classroom assignments such as outlines that that the student aces, bringing up the student's mediocre grades on tests. The students also make excellent use of extra credit opportunities, and are very nice people, meaning teachers give them the benefit of the doubt.

3. The student is having their teacher hold their hands on assignments and also is getting extra help from others such as tutors or highly educated parents. Example: One of the "poor test takers/high gpa" students I know had her scientist/professor dad help greatly with science/math courses and by revising her written assignments for other courses.

1-3 are true of almost all people in my cowtown high school, along with great cheating abilities. Nice way to diagnose the problem accuratley, Northstarmom. I honestly don't know how these people will succeed in life.

bananabel789 · 07-03-2009, 09:45 AM

I agree with you that the "bad test-taker" excuse is overused and flimsy. However...

Those stupid "ballparking" and "narrowing down" tricks won't help you much at all, if you want any kind of decent score.

Funny, they led me to an 800 in CR and 2220 overall

Bay · 07-03-2009, 10:15 AM

I have a D going to Yale this Fall, whom I would describe as a bad multiple-choice test taker. I suspect she might even have an undiagnosed LD vis-a-vis such tests. She has excellent grades (including in all math classes) and is an outstanding writer. She took a SAT prep course and studied on her own for the test, but still scored in the lower range (on the non-writing portion) for Ivy League admissions.

I asked on the Yale board about learning in advance which courses had multiple choice exams (for a non-math/science major), and a current student posted that s/he had only experienced one while at Yale. I also have a D at Harvard, who says the only course she took that had multiple choice questions on an exam was Psych. All other courses require paper-writing, essays and short-answer exams.

Based on my experience, I think standardized test scores are overemphasized for college admissions.

An0maly · 07-03-2009, 10:39 AM

Quote:

I'd hardly call the AMC and AIME speed tests. I've only taken the AMC, but the questions are rather basic until the late teens. If one does the first 15-16 questions at a 1 minute per question pace, which I feel is reasonable given the nature of those questions, that person will have a whole hour to complete 10 of those challenging questions at the end. And mathematics is a different nature altogether. Part of the mathematics skill is being able to quickly perform calculations. Perhaps not all students who feel rushed on the SAT math are not good math students, but if a student does not feel that they are getting ample time on the AMC, it is because they simply don't know how to do some of the questions.

And yet there is clear evidence that there are some students who qualified for Blue MOP but failed to pass the AMC's in the following year. I also agree that AMC's aren't "speed" math type tests, but they do pose a problem for those people who take a long time.

Northstarmom · 07-03-2009, 10:50 AM

"1-3 are true of almost all people in my cowtown high school, along with great cheating abilities. Nice way to diagnose the problem accuratley, Northstarmom. I honestly don't know how these people will succeed in life."

They'll do fine (talking about the hard workers who are high gpa/low test score students). They have lots of self discipline, get along well with others, work hard, and do a good job of giving supervisors what supervisors want. For most jobs, they'll be exemplary employees.

They aren't likely to end up being CEOs of major companies, nationally respected lawyers, doctors or researchers, and they won't be faculty at top universities, but they're likely to be employed at decent jobs. Anyway, most people -- no matter how smart -- aren't going to become CEOs of major companies, etc.

I've seen people like this get doctorates from 2nd tier colleges while people with sky high scores, low grades, very independent natures dropped out of college. A strong work ethic and a personality that aims to please can take one far.

Morsmordre · 07-03-2009, 11:10 AM

Quote:

I have a D going to Yale this Fall, whom I would describe as a bad multiple-choice test taker. I suspect she might even have an undiagnosed LD vis-a-vis such tests. She has excellent grades (including in all math classes) and is an outstanding writer. She took a SAT prep course and studied on her own for the test, but still scored in the lower range (on the non-writing portion) for Ivy League admissions.

I asked on the Yale board about learning in advance which courses had multiple choice exams (for a non-math/science major), and a current student posted that s/he had only experienced one while at Yale. I also have a D at Harvard, who says the only course she took that had multiple choice questions on an exam was Psych. All other courses require paper-writing, essays and short-answer exams.

Based on my experience, I think standardized test scores are overemphasized for college admissions.

I'll agree with you on this-very few tests in college are multiple choice asides from True/False questions, and usually you'll have to explain them. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've never taken a multiple choice test while in college and I'm majoring in something technical.

However, it is my opinion that for most poor test takers it is not the multiple choice format of the test, but the fact that it is a test that is pretty unlike what you've seen before (if you haven't prepared for it) and tougher than most questions you've been asked to answer in high school (if your high school curriculum wasn't challenging enough). If you combine those two aspects, that would make anyone do poorly on a test no matter how good a test taker one was.

Seeing as in high school a lot of tests are multiple choice (or at least they were for me) most of these high GPA low test scorer kids do not suffer from not doing well on multiple choice tests. I'm not saying that you are trying to explain away all or even most poor test takers ability to do well on these tests on the account of the multiple choice format, but I am saying that it doesn't make these tests overrated in college admissions.

mcgoogly · 07-03-2009, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mowmow721

"Bad test taker" is an excuse for not knowing enough, or knowing enough but not being fast enough to do it (Which generally means you didn't know it WELL enough).

Are you serious? That's an incredibly ignorant observation. Speed does not necessarily correlate with expertise, ESPECIALLY at the high-levels.
So yeah, you're right, not being able to do math speedily doesn't mean you're a "bad test taker" I guess, it just means that you don't fit the narrow abilities that the SAT measures.

Because the abilities that they measure are very narrow. Think about how absurd the SAT test is in the context of real life. As some people have pointed already, multiple choice tests are never used in college (and if they are, you should probably try to slip the information that your professor is using MC questions to your school's Department Chair, who will probably reprimand your professor for using such inane high-school level testing methods).

More importantly, speed (of doing math, for example) matters very little either in life or in your silly and latent attempts to quantitatively measure intelligence (because that is the premise of this thread mowmow, even if you haven't actually come out and said it). Do you think that when you're writing your doctorate in math, or when you're number-crunching at your big time i-banking job, that it actually matters if you finish a certain math problem in 2 minutes as opposed to 5? Of course not, what matters is simply whether you get the answer right. Time is almost wholly irrelevant. I mean look, my dad has a PhD in mathematical economics. Even when I bring him questions from my measly high school math courses to do because I don't understand them, he sometimes takes like 15-20 minutes on one problem. So what? In the real world, how fast you can crunch numbers is so incredibly insignificant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mowmow

I see a LOT of people say "Oh, well how can 4 hours of a Saturday morning" demonstrate your intelligence/knowledge? What does your knowledge mean then, application-wise? It it just arbitrary junk you hold in your head for no purpose- For Christ's sake. Excusing the writing essay (We all know how that goes down...). Math questions are in front of you. Solve them in a decent amount of time.

Really? You've never taken a test when you had a cold or a cough and thought that you did worse because of it (from a decreased ability to concentrate)? I think how one feels when taking the SAT can probably swing a score up to 100 points.

However, this usually doesn't end up being that big of a deal because in the continental USA, you can take the test multiple times in case you happened to be feeling ill or whatever the first time. For those living outside the USA where the SAT doesn't come around too often.. well, I feel pretty bad for them.

manyman234 · 07-03-2009, 12:44 PM

As much as I wanna go with your whole speed doesn't matter in the real world, hate to break it to you, but in many technical jobs speed is very important.

Say your a software developer, and your of course getting payed relative to the number of hours you work. Someone who doesn't know their material quite as well might take 5 hours to diagnose and fix a small bug. Whereas another person might take 5 minutes. The person who took 5 hours to get this job done will be kicked out the door.

In today's job market efficiency and time management is incredibly important. To say that time does not matter is incredibly ignorant itself. Considering most jobs are payed relative to how much TIME you work, I should think the employer would want to the most work completed in that timespan.

silence_kit · 07-03-2009, 01:48 PM

Quote:

As much as I wanna go with your whole speed doesn't matter in the real world, hate to break it to you, but in many technical jobs speed is very important.

You are missing the point. SAT math is all about flying through a bunch of little calculations. This is not what doing mathematics is like in academia, or even in industry. Real problems take a while to think through. mcgoogly is trying to say that being able to multiply out (x^2+3x+9)*(x^3+5x^2+7) 10 seconds faster than the other guy isn't a very useful skill.

Quote:

Considering most jobs are payed relative to how much TIME you work, I should think the employer would want to the most work completed in that timespan.

I thought most skilled jobs are salaried.

jenx1234 · 07-03-2009, 02:08 PM

I also hate when people dismiss you as "a good test taker." Maybe, just maybe, I have some intelligence! Or maybe I'm just easily offended.

strykermom · 07-03-2009, 02:39 PM

This thread illustrates how little high SAT scores show about a person. The complete lack of imagination, tolerance and empathy is astounding. The idea that some people are better than others at taking tests is no harder to believe than the idea that some can draw better, or run faster or write postry or design beautiful clothes or whatever. Those comments about not being a CEO ... I bet if you surveyed the CEOs of the top 500 companies, you would not find that they all had fabulous SAT scores. A person's competence, talent, intelligence, and ability to succeed are based many different factors, and cannot be reduced to a few numbers.

I think you will find that, in a few short years, no one will care what you got on your SATs.

mcgoogly · 07-03-2009, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Say your a software developer, and your of course getting payed relative to the number of hours you work. Someone who doesn't know their material quite as well might take 5 hours to diagnose and fix a small bug. Whereas another person might take 5 minutes. The person who took 5 hours to get this job done will be kicked out the door.

Ok I guess maybe if you're thinking about that kind of cubicle software developer job (your job description makes me think of the guys in Office Space).. I was thinking about like, the kind of "software developers" that work at Google. I would think the latter is the type of job that most (especially on CC, realm of overachievers as far as that stereotype goes) aim for.

Ray192 · 07-03-2009, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Ok I guess maybe if you're thinking about that kind of cubicle software developer job (your job description makes me think of the guys in Office Space).. I was thinking about like, the kind of "software developers" that work at Google. I would think the latter is the type of job that most (especially on CC, realm of overachievers as far as that stereotype goes) aim for.

Have you seen the sort of questions google asks in interviews?

Quick thinking is very important. When there's a deadline coming up, and there's a major bug/flaw in the software, what do you do? And don't tell me you think Google people never do any debugging.