<p>I have always maintained that rather than the SAT testing one’s ‘aptitude’, it really tests how much time one devotes to it. It is often observed that hard work correlates to greater scores and yet, there are always those brilliant kids who score well despite an apparent lack of effort. Thus, I would like to know the degree to which you support or reject my aforementioned view.</p>
<p>I think scores are affected by many things, including:</p>
<p>intelligence
logic
natural test taking ability
work -time
work - quality
etc.</p>
<p>In short, yes. Those naturally brilliant students will score well. Those who study hard, get a tutor, put effort into testing will also score better than they would without those efforts. It does test aptitude but, as with any test, it can be beaten.</p>
<p>oops didn’t intend to post here, but since I did…the college board used to pretend that you couldn’t study for the SAT. Now they admit that studying helps, which we all knew even back then. But, I think that scores will plateau even with test prep. Many kids can improve by quite a bit, but I think that most kids aren’t going to score 2400 even if they work through several books and take several classes. There are plenty of kids who aren’t satisfied with their scores and go back and put significant time into prepping for a re-take, yet aren’t able to make much improvement.</p>
<p>Yes. Without a doubt. </p>
<p>@mathyone I disagree completely with your ‘unable to break score plateau’ theory. Breaking a score plateau is simple but only a few know how to do it. I’m just going to copy paste a post I made about this earlier :-</p>
<p>Seems like you have hit a score plateau, sir. No matter, everyone hits one and in retrospect, I must say that, despite the fact that improvement seems impossible, there are actually very simple ways to cross the plateau. My answer will only be for CR.</p>
<p>i) Vocabulary - the most clear cut way to improve a CR score. Though about 100-200 words may not improve your score much, a 700-900 word increase in vocabulary can help boost the score by up to 180-200 points!
ii) Changing the way you attempt the sections - experiment with various new ways to attempt the section i.e. doing the passages before the sentence completions or doing the long passages before the short ones, etc. You might thus find a method of attempting the section that works better for you.
iii) Changing the way you attempt the passages - experiment with various new ways to attempt the passages i.e. instead of reading the whole passage, read it in bits while simultaneously answering the line reference question. This will improve time management and help you keep the material in mind when doing the questions.</p>
<p>All of the aforementioned points can help you improve your score and get past that pesky plateau. Try them out. Good luck! :)</p>
<p>@altolime, there are lots of kids stressing over the SAT, I don’t know how many test prep books sold and classes taken and tutors hired. And after all that (and probably many without all of that), there were 494 students in the class of 2013 who scored 2400. Out of 1.6 million test takers. Do you think all the other kids just didn’t work hard enough or did something so very wrong when they studied? So, I don’t buy that more prep is all that everyone needs. A lot more than 494 students have worked <em>very</em> hard prepping for this test. </p>
<p>@mathyone chill out 
you speak of 2400 as if it is the only score worth getting when 2100+ are all considered ‘great scores’. And yes, I believe, based on observation of the thousands of SAT takers that I have interacted with, that hard work (which can be of varying degrees for different people) does indeed have great potential to push one into the great score category. Being an Pakistani, I have seen people actually learn english from scratch and score great on the SAT due to their hard work. I have seen similar achievements in math.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to imply that anything less than 2400 is not a good score. I know some fantastic students who did not achieve that. But, anything less than that, if you are working hard, is a plateau. With the level of effort that some students are putting in, they should get to 2400, if they haven’t plateaued.</p>
<p>well we have our differences in the belief of the ‘score plateau’ theory. I believe that progress is inevitable but sometimes, time and the way we pursue success in the SAT holds us back.</p>
<p>Some people have memory issues. Some have comprehension issues. Some have trouble with time management. So I expect that while the test is coachable, past a certain point some people will not improve much. And no, that’s not a tiny fraction of test-takers. OTOH, do I really think this test is measuring ability in a granular way? Of course not.</p>
<p>The writing section has become a joke. Even poor writers have been known to get a great score by following a formula. Ultimately, studying strategies can help, but if you are trying to improve scores to get into a better school, you will not likely do so well in that school because it is targeting kids who are much smarter and don’t need to “beat the system” to score well.</p>
<p>@AltoLime, you can skip about 10% of the questions and score about 2100. That may be all you need even for top schools, but if that’s as far as you get after hard work and repeated testing, I’d call that a plateau. I came across an interesting chart from the college board a year or two ago, but unfortunately I have not been able to find this information again. I wish I had a copy of it, and if anyone does, I’d be interested to see it again. But if I recall correctly, it said that of students scoring 780-790, only 20% of them managed to get an 800 upon retesting. The majority of them scored lower, and I think the average loss in points was surprisingly high–something like 40-60 points. You can see similar trends in this far less detailed information:
<a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Student-Senior-Year-Score-Gain-Loss-2013.pdf”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Student-Senior-Year-Score-Gain-Loss-2013.pdf</a>
Look at juniors who score 680-720 who retake as a senior (those are pretty good scores already, so presumably most of these high scoring students retake after studying with the hope of improving)
average CR score 697 goes down to 692, loss of 5 points. I call that plateau.
average math, 695 goes to 697. Slightly better, gain of 2 points, but I’d still call that plateau.
average writing 697 goes to 683. 14 points lost. I’d call that a loss.</p>
<p>Regression to the mean.</p>