How will the pandemic affect MIT admission this year?

1NJParent
Sun, 06 Sep 2020 12:34:46 +0000

hebegebe:

Why would it value some applicants achieving high test scores through early and undue preparation?

Note that for a significant percentage of MIT applicants , these tests don’t require much prep at all. Students strong in math or English are often taking the SAT much younger, before age 13 in particular, in order to qualify for talent searches such as Hopkins CTY and SET. Most of these students can walk in as juniors and get a 1500+ without any addl prep beyond what they do for PSAT.

I agree that some gifted students won’t need any prep for current versions of these tests. The older version of SAT, because of the breadth of its vocabulary uses, do require some prep even for these top students to achieve perfect or near perfect scores, especially for young test takers (some 8th graders do achieve perfect scores even on those older SATs for CTY). I know some schools/parents encourage their students to prep for PSAT, I think that practice should be discouraged beyond getting students familiarized with the test format, as prep defeats the purpose of the test. National Merit Scholarship program and colleges that award such scholarships perhaps should find some other ways.