Guaranteed Admission In Caltech?

mathboy98
Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:15:04 +0000

tailor to teaching SAT concepts



I think this refers most to the SAT IIs. Frankly, I didn’t take the SAT II in physics because I never really had background in that stuff, yet I did AP Physics back in the day. Yet my biology class prepared me well for the biology SAT II even in my first year of high school.

As for the SAT I, I think someone who scores 2400 without much preparation and went to a non-obsessive-prep type school is probably a really good test-taker, and that’s actually a good thing. You have to be really precise, not make mistakes, spot little points quickly, etc.

However, I think it depends WHY someone got a high score or didn’t. Sometimes someone won’t score high for something which may be a sign of a good thing - e.g. if they can’t read and glance at the key points in a critical reading passage quickly, it just may mean they have a slow, methodical reading style, which may be a good thing depending on their major and interests. Taking apart a passage, finding something to take away from it, for example, and analyzing it, are very different from spotting main points and scanning.

I know a decent number of cases where high SAT scorers (2350+) were very average thinkers, but had generally good reading/writing skills and certainly weren’t dumb.