<p>Too nervous to try the edit feature on the last one. 
I may have been too quick in one of my reponses, marite ā a response which might have indicated a belief in more applicability of the writing score than is in fact appropriate. So Iām sorry if I threw you off there. Seems that colleges also have not so much faith in the writing score as an indicator of varied, college-level ability.</p>
<p>āLearning the āvocabularyā is not sufficient.ā</p>
<p>^^I completely agree with that. And acknowledge that my own broad sweep of āsciencesā (earlier, about a page back) was not meant to assume equal ability in all of them ā merely that many science students are comfortable in a variety of sciences, even while clearly being more capable of and interested in only some or one. They may adapt to addāl sciences more ably or quickly than a humanities student who has <em>not</em> been trained well in the practice of academic analysis. Just twice this year some family friends at Berkeley have switched certain science majors for other ones because of a lack of fit in each case.</p>
<p>So again, sorry for any undisciplined statements on my own part. :)</p>
<p>Gosh! I just really donāt agree with the dominant voices on this thread one bit. First, I believe truly good writing requires really good logic skills and āhigher orderā thinking skills. Most truly fine scientists are quite wonderful writers. In fact, we are living in something of a golden age of science writing. Second, I still say that the 800 across all sections of the SAT in a single sitting is an exceptional achievement. Yes, carelessness can indeed blow it. But guess what ā these are kids on the brink of adulthood taking a serious test and trying hard. When very bright kids avoid careless mistakes for four hours I think it really counts for something important. For one thing, it points to a certain humility. It says to me that this is a kid who hasnāt grown up being told how gifted they are and how everything is easy for them and how difficult it is to challenge them. Instead, we have in this type of kid a humble and hungry mind, and a huge ability to focus hard when it matters. I can think of a multitude of professions where these traits would be highly valued. Sorry folks, just not with you on most of your views.</p>
<p>
Bomgeedad - you had me questioning my recollection, but, likely or not, itās what happened in November '05. From my sonās CollegeBoard report:</p>
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ā¦which might, by the way, explain the difficulty of getting certain sub-800 or sub-2400 scores. On some tests a 780 or 790 may simply not be a scoring option.</p>
<p>āMost truly fine scientists are quite wonderful writers.ā</p>
<p>Where do you get the āmostā part from? It sounds as if thatās most scientists that you read. I read a variety of scientific articles. Some of those authors are wonderful writers; some are terrible writers: same with social scientists & political writers. One of the most brilliant pieces of writing I have ever read was written not by an Engl. major or a scientist but by an art critic. It was an obituary about Gene Kelly; it was more insightful, intellectual, & learned than many articles I read about academic subjects.</p>
<p>It is not my opinion as a teacher of writing & analytical skills that the SAT writing portion ārequiresā higher-order thinking skills.</p>
<p>But that has still never been my point. My point was encapsulated most recently by what Drosselmeir said on this thread. A high, even āperfectā score will not reduce an excellent studentās chances for a reach admission; it is simply insufficient in and of itself. It will bring high visibility to that student in the admissions room. If that studentās higher-order thinking skills are demonstrated in the 4 yrs. of high school (+ anything else, if chosen), then I donāt see where the problem is going to be, unless you believe that a student should, at the start of 9th grade, be given an early admissions letter reserving a spot for as many as 4 years.</p>
<p>Kluge, If I remember correctly, I think that if you omit an answer, you are penalized less than if you answer it incorrectly. Which was why my son got a 790 on his math score.</p>
<p>Also (with regard to the same post I was discussing), does the poster think that students with imperfect scores do not have humble & hungry minds? I donāt quite get the point of the either/or, black/white, must-be-opposite-of some of your statements.</p>
<p>āIt is not my opinion as a teacher of writing & analytical skills that the SAT writing portion ārequiresā higher-order thinking skills.ā
Agree with the above. The new writing portion of the SAT is still not being used by many colleges because it has been pointed out to be too formulaic. In fact a student can write something that is logical nonsense, but if a lot of big words are used, and it follows the 3 paragraph rule, they can earn a high score.</p>
<p>marite: I have enormous respect (and not a little envy) for those who have marked math ability (physics fascinates me). I was a good math student but an exceptional language student. This led to a PhD in English. I can guarantee than even in humanities disciplines the ability to make a cogent argument and analyze one is more important than the ability to analyze tone, etc, Literary studies does very little of this. Contemporary lterary theory is difficult and based on reasoned arguments.</p>
<p>I have edited PhD theses in MANY disciplines, including sciences. Clarity and cogency are some of the things I edit for, along with grammar, usage, punctuation, etc.</p>
<p>I teach freshman writing to students who enter all disciplines, and central to our project is the ability to analyze arguments in many disciplines and to produce them.</p>
<p>I have also taught business English, so I am coaching students to write memos; Iām sure that I could decipher the rival claims of courses of action defined by various memos. I am also sure that there are Humanities majors who are impractical and canāt follow an historical or economic argument, but those folks donāt do well in our discipline in most cases; my professors would have wiped the floor with them.</p>
<p>BTW: I love science; I wish my math skills were a tad stronger.</p>
<p>" I can guarantee than even in humanities disciplines the ability to make a cogent argument and analyze one is more important than the ability to analyze tone, etc, Literary studies does very little of this. Contemporary lterary theory is difficult and based on reasoned arguments."</p>
<p>Totally. Try semiotics on for size. At Berkeley, if you cannot analyze. and to the point sometimes of almost pure abstraction, you are at high risk in the humanities.</p>
<p>This is also why a move to an āeasierā high school is of dubious ultimate value to oneās college career.</p>
<p>My mathguy scored 800 twice on critical reading, 760 and then 770 on math.</p>
<p>As to writing, while I agree to some extent good writing works across disicplines. (Gould can write about science and baseball), for the most part itās pretty hard to judge writing across disciplines in academia. Thereās just too much assumed knowledge. My husband is, I believe, a pretty good writer, based on his ability to edit other writing, but I canāt read his papers. I feel the same way about semiotics which bores me to tears.</p>
<p>Without belaboring it, I totally agree with Mythmom et alās comments. An English major who analyzes for tone only and canāt dissect logical arguments is a very poor English majorāthat a history TA assumes he can tell one from lack of good arguments reflects poorly on the TA.</p>
<p>Being a good humanities major is, centrally, being able to think critically. Stuff about tone etc is rather peripheral.</p>
<p>Okay folks, you confuse writing and analytical skills and what kind of analysis is required for which discipline. Thinking critically, yes, of course, but about what? Please donāt say one reads a math text the same way one reads Charles Dickens. I wonāt buy it.</p>
<p>Different disciplines require different reading strategies. I say READING, not WRITING (and, yes, Iām shouting).
You do not read Crime and Punishment the same way you read an argument about rational choice. You do not write about Crime and Punishment the way you write about rational choice (which is a highly economistic argument, by the way).
Please do not malign the TA on no evidence whatsoever. He made an accurate guess, and he checked. The students were English majors. They just applied a reading strategy that worked in one discipline to another.</p>
<p>Over and out.</p>
<p>Well, I donāt think I maligned the anonymous TA anymore than the maligning of an entire class of a discipline.</p>
<p>I donāt know how to explain how critical thinking (in part but not wholly literary analysis) is germaine to every discipline, including literature, because it seems obvious to me that it is. At least, it has been central to every literature class i have ever taught (and taken, for that matter.)</p>
<p>Who said anything negative about an entire discipline? I said that different disciplines require different reading strategies. What is derogatory about this?
Do you suppose that people should be reading physics texts and novels by Salman Rushdie in exactly the same way, focusing on the same things? Like, perhaps, character development, metaphors, allusions? Yeah, right.</p>
<p>-
. My critical analysis skills suggest that this was a derogatory speculation. He did not assume. He knew. YOU assumed.</p>
<p>This discussion is making me grouchy. Iām off to read a novel for character, plot, and yes, voice and tone.</p>
<p>Menloparkmom, the effect of one missed answer is the same as one omitted answer. Wrong answers are minus 1/4 point, so one wrong answer rounds down to nothing more than an omitted one - in my sonās case, a raw score of 53 on a 54 question test, which is the same score you get if you omit one answer. But different tests have different curves - one wrong could be anywhere from 770 to 800 depending on when the test is taken, I believe. (I bet your son didnāt leave one question blank - if he could get all but one right I expect heād think he knew the answers to all of them, and just got fooled on one.)</p>
<p>MariteāI based my analysis on the facts presented by you:</p>
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</p>
<p>I always welcome clarifications which illuminate the issue, such as from āprobablyā to āhe knewāāin other words, from speculation to actual facts. Given that, I would have given him more leeway. </p>
<p>You didnāt say formerly that different disciplines require different reading strategies. What you said was that the TA inferred that humanities students were straitjacketed into a specific strategy which precludes critical thinking, which should be umbrellaāed to all reading strategies.</p>
<p><a href=āCollege Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Toolsā>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>I totally agree with garland (post 714)ā¦</p>
<p>marite: Some contemporary lit crit IS closer to a math text than Charles Dickens. Yes, Iāve already admitted thaat my math skills wouldnāt allow me to do the problem sets of advanced math texts, but I, and most accomplished literary critics, are more than capable of reading and decoding anything written in LANGUAGE. In fact, lit crit. encompasses philosophy, history, anthropology, semiotics, economicsā¦I could go on. Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powell, and Kurt Vonnegut began in engineering, biology, and chemistry respectively. They explained their switch to literature by saying that it is more inclusive. Yes, different disciplines utilize their own terminology, but this is easy to learn. Some of the texts I needed to read to pass my doctoral orals included Freud, Heidegger, Derrida, Darwin, Einstein, Heisenberg, Euler, Foucault, Lacan, I could go on. Literature exists within society; a good literary critic must understand the entire context of the period she explores, including its mathematics. I wonāt list the math themed books Iāve read this year, but I can if you insist. Why would you want to defend such an untenable premise? I donāt think you can say what weāre confusing as if you have a superior vantage point. The random comments of a biogoted TA are not very convincing to me.</p>
<p>The conversation I had with my obstetrician about Heisenberg had him pouting because my training was so much more extensive and inclusive than his. Yes, I have disccussed these topics with world class physicists at Brookhaven Labs who are also personal friends. Your dismissive comments about tone and Dickens indicates that you have no true understanding of our discipline. I certainly would not deride yours in the same way, or specify areas of knowledge you were not able to understand, write about or comment on.</p>