Did you use your race to your advantage on college apps?

[Poseur]

<p>

@superwoman

Dbate- i understand where youre coming from but when i was taking the PSAT, i was never told it was important, or that i could even get a scholarship if i did well. i was the only AA in my class at the time, and i never received any guidance whatsoever in terms of standardized testing. Compared to my peers whom payed thousands of dollars to have tutors, and take classes that i couldnt afford. in addition to that, i bet you money the people who were finnalists prepared, theres no way you can just walk in and take the exam and magically do well, it takes preparation. preparation involves money. Another problem i noticed with my own family members were that some of them couldnt even afford to pay to register for the PSAT, so they ended up taking the SAT without any taste of what the test would be like. i dont know if its just me but i didnt slack, i am HORRIBLE at taking exams, but i do extremely well in school, im in the top 14% while i struggle on the SAT. i think it just depends on peoples case, not all blacks are “slacking”. I always say this to my younger sister who is now a junior, before she took the PSAT i helped her prepare because she also couldnt afford materials to prepare while our mom is unemployed, i told her if i knew how important the PSAT would be i would have been at least National achievement semifinalist because i would have tried to prepare in a cost effective manner. Thats just my $ 0.02!

While money and preparation DO help, and that’s a sad and unfair reality of the PSAT and SAT, your generalization is just that. Most of the highest-scoring people I know did so with ZERO preparation, or very little. For example – and I’m not trying to brag; just to illustrate – I took the PSAT my sophomore year having only looked at one practice test, the night before, and I only missed three questions, yielding a score of 234. Similarly, I and several friends of mine took the SAT without having practiced or prepared, except for having taken the PSAT once or twice (depending on when we took the SAT), and got the following scores: 2390, 2400, 2360, 2320, 2260, 2290… the list goes on and on. And these are only people from my medium-sized public school. My grade had seven NMSFs, and as far as I know, none of the seven of us prepared any more than taking the PSAT the year before, in addition to one or two practice PSATs (which our school provided for free and which I doubt made any difference whatsoever, considering that we were missing very few questions already on the practices). In fact, the two or three students I knew who DID prepare didn’t end up making the NMSF cut.</p>

<p>Now, you can argue about the quality of education and how students who have had a “better” education score higher on the SAT, and I agree with you. Some people have just been exposed to more than others. The extent to which these factors make a difference is debatable, but no standardized test can purely test “intellect” or “intelligence”; we humans aren’t smart enough to design a test like that. So please understand that I’m not saying people who score higher are “smarter” or anything.</p>

<p>I just find it necessary to respond because I think it’s ridiculous that you assume that everyone who qualified did so because they shelled out money for preparation. Not as a rule, but as a generalization, the vast majority of the people I know who did well did NOT prepare – and, not to sound rude, but most of those who found it necessary to prepare didn’t prove capable of doing exceptionally well, after all.</p>