<p>The most useful prep for S1, in retrospect, would have been remembering to bubble in the answers. Seriously. Wrote in the answer on a math student-produced-response and forgot to bubble it on the PSAT; forgot to bubble in one question on CR to which he knew the answer on the SAT.</p>
<p>We insisted that he would not retake, however – not that he would have anyway! ;)</p>
<p>Thank you, xiggi! As I read this thread, I also wondered what “no prep” meant - in the context of college admissions, which is pretty much the only reason anyone takes the SAT, right? Yes, I can see that the kids who walk into the test cold and walk out with a result in the 99th percentile are impressively gifted. But what’s that worth? There isn’t an application question to the effect of “how much SAT-prepping did you do?” (and if there was, how reliable would the answers really be?) Adcoms have the score report in front of them - they don’t know whether the student never cracked a prep book or had an individual tutor. They consider other factors, including economic background and strength of the high school, to see the entire application in context.</p>
<p>My kids scored well on the SATs, within 50 points of each other. The one with the highest IQ and highest score did no prep because she was taking the test in January of junior year and thought she’d certainly take it again (we hadn’t found CC at that point and didn’t know she’d have to submit all her scores, or she wouldn’t have been so casual about it). To her pleasure and relief, she didn’t need to take the test again.</p>
<p>The other two did self-prep: 10 Real SATs and the daily online question, then two shots at the test itself. Their scores were strong enough to get them where they wanted to go. The middle child, who is the highest-achieving academically, would say “so what?” if her sister pointed out that she scored 20 points higher without prep. And then ask whether, if her older sister could have scored even higher with a little prep, who’s really the “smarter” one? (The youngest would long since have left the room.) The point is to get the best score you can. If you’re willing to prep for it, you’ve still earned it.</p>
<p>No prep here…I ordered son to at least look on the web site at the “Question of the Day” samples–he did a few, but got bored cause they were too easy. 
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<p>(The occasional one he didn’t know wasn’t enough stimulation to overcome the boredom of the ones he could do in his sleep.)</p>
<p>On test day last weekend he almost forgot his admission ticket! Did remember the calculator & pencils by himself, however.</p>
<p>Barring some mischance such as repeatedly bubbling in all the wrong letters, we’re “one and done” here too!</p>
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<p>You obviously have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Frankly, the SAT is not a particularly difficult test in my opinion; I know this is very much not true for most kids, but it was for me, and because I never had trouble with high-stress standardized testing I never saw the point in prepping for the SAT. I took it for the first time in sophomore year, figuring to see where I stood. I got a good enough score that I never had a second thought about prep - I just sat it again in late junior year to ensure that my final score ended up in the range I wanted (2300+), which it did.</p>
<p>I’m not exactly atypical, either; a number of the smartest friends I had at school also took the test with little to no prep and did very well. And when I say “no prep”, I don’t mean the normal baseline “no prep” that comes in American schools with the entire college frenzy and attendant fixation on the SATs - I’m from Canada, and that aspect is completely absent.</p>
<p>My outlook has always been that the SAT is a “just get over the bar” kind of thing - figure out the score you want, and do as little as possible to get it. In my case, as little as possible meant doing nothing except writing the test; for others that’s not true. But there’s no shame or worth in either approach. It’s just an admissions test!</p>
<p>To the question of “does it matter?” I’d answer, no, it doesn’t–no one asks on the test. But, tokenadult asked a specific question, and people answered as they viewed it, based on their experience. I figure the title of the thread indicated the subject pretty clearly.</p>
<p>Columbia_Student: Love your succinct definition. I have always thought of “no prep” as preparation without outside human help, and “prep” as preparation with outside human help. Less than $100 buys a nice little library of test prep books with which to prep on your own, for 2 hours flat or 2 hours a day. Any form of outside tutoring – group or private – will cost more than $100.</p>
<p>. . . and it’s not for bragging rights that QMP has a friend who scored 2400 with what I called “no prep.”</p>
<p>Actual reasons:</p>
<p>1) I have the impression from this forum that some families are enrolling students in SAT prep courses that are unnecessary, and perhaps even counterproductive. They should save their money for better uses. They should also save their children’s time.</p>
<p>2) I have the impression from this forum that some students are discouraged because their families cannot afford SAT prep courses. Some of these students do not need any “prep” that they haven’t had already. Others can benefit significantly from following xiggi’s method, and either purchasing the Blue Book of Real SAT’s or borrowing it from a library.</p>
<p>I’ve mentioned on another thread my set of indications that some type of prep is or is not needed. Here are a few repeats:</p>
<p>No prep needed:</p>
<p>1) The student takes the PSAT as a sophomore and scores in the National Merit Semi-Finalist range.</p>
<p>2) The student takes the SAT in middle school for Talent Search purposes. Projecting to the junior-year SAT by adding 50 points per section per year (and truncating at 800) produces an adequate score.</p>
<p>3) The average of the parents’ SAT scores is high enough for whatever purpose is intended, and the child seems to have similar test-taking skills.</p>
<p>Some prep a good idea:</p>
<p>1) The student cannot solve the problems on the SAT Math section; i.e., the mistakes are mistakes of understanding, and not just careless errors or results of misreading the questions. In this case, I think it is likely that the school’s mathematics curriculum has not prepared the student adequately. Note: The student need not have previously seen problems like some of those posed on the SAT, but the student should be able to figure the problems out, by applying what he/she does know. Recollection of formulas beyond those for the slope of a line, the general form of a linear equation, and the Pythagorean theorem is virtually never needed–so this should not be of concern.</p>
<p>2) The student is unfamiliar with American culture. This one applies to CR and W. While CB has been trying to reduce the cultural bias of the SAT (e.g., the infamous “regatta” question is history), it is still heavily culture-laden. To give an example from another section of this forum: A student inquired whether he should mention that his parents had qualified to immigrate to the U.S. when he was eight, based on their accomplishments in their field. A family friend had advised him that this would be a good idea, because the admissions representatives would raise their estimations of the student’s potential, on the basis of his parents’ accomplishments. The same student also noted that Intel selectors ask whether the applicant’s parents are scientists. The student believed that an applicant would be given a boost in the Intel competition, if he came from a scientific family, because an applicant from a family of scientists would be judged to have higher potential himself/herself. I doubt that anyone who is a native-born American would hold this belief about the reason for the question. It is fairly obvious that the question is intended to permit the Intel selectors to give a boost to those who do NOT come from a family of scientists. . . . Now, imagine taking the CR and W sections with an outlook that is skewed from that of most Americans.</p>
<p>3) The student’s school and/or outside reading and writing have not provided a good grounding in grammar. For instance, the CB folks are sticklers for parallelism, beyond the conventions observed in less formal writing (i.e., on this thread, and very probably in this post itself).</p>
<p>My thoughts on Carol Dweck’s work will follow. It’s ok, I know you are not standing by to read them!</p>
<p>Excellent post, QM.</p>
<p>My sophomore son goes to an excellent all-boys high school that does not offer AP classes per se. Every boy takes the exact same curriculum. It is a very old-fashioned school that really emphasizes the humanities but also has a strong math and science program. My S’s form master dissuaded the boys from taking the SAT in the 7th grade. He said that DUKE TIP was just a money-making venture, etc. Now that I am on CC, I know better and sometimes wish he would have taken it. But he is somewhat of a slacker, and if he had gotten high grades on the SAT then, he might have become an even a bigger slacker. Who knows! He took the PSAT this year and got a really high score (10 points over the cut-off for our state for NMS). I encouraged him to do some review beforehand (since he has never taken an SAT), but he refused (he is a sophomore, after all, and his form master actually discouraged prepping). I do agree that his prep has been all the years he has been at his excellent school.</p>
<p>My Jr. D is at a school that is not as great academically (and she is not as natuarlly gifted as her brother), and I strongly encouraged her to do the Xiggi method-type review. I even bought her the blue book and two other review books! She reviewed some, but not nearly as much as I wish she had. She just got her PSAT scores back, and it was 8 points below last year’s cut-off for NMS. Even though we were all very happy, I think she wishes she would have prepped more. Hopefully, this will motivate her to prep more for the SAT (she’s planning on taking it in March).</p>
<p>The bottom line is, the kids I admire the most are those who are self-motivated to practice for the SAT on their own without going to expensive classes or tutors.</p>
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Whoops - apologies, garland. I guess it all depends on what “mean” means, doesn’t it? Sorry for taking up space with mere musings. But “mean” can also connote “what is the significance of” - or so I thought.</p>
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<p>TrinSF, getting more familiar with arcane questions and learning what to do with a question to avoid wasting a substantial amount of time might have helped getting a higher score in the first place, especially in a very strong subjec. </p>
<p>Time management is crucial on the SAT --and even more so on the ACT. There is a theory that every question on the SAT can be solved in less than 45 seconds with the proper techniques, which usually require a bit of mental agility or … experience with the type of questions that only show up on standardized tests.</p>
<p>In the end, it’s a question about balancing a modicum of effort with the possible dividends of a test score that represent the true ability of the student. Nobody gets a brownie for underscoring.</p>
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<p>Exactly. There aren’t any brownie points for showing up without preparing. </p>
<p>I’m told by a lawyer about my age that some law schools used to ask if the applicant prepared for the LSAT. That question is no longer asked by the same law schools because it didn’t provide any information that was useful in the admission process.</p>
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<p>Agreed. All of [QuantMech’s</a> post in this thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061427430-post67.html]QuantMech’s”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061427430-post67.html) offers excellent advice.</p>
<p>I also enjoyed QuantMech’s post.</p>
<p>I really like QuantMech’s post above, because it shows that while focused prep may not be needed for some students, it may really help others. I guess I would add that “minimal” prep might be useful for students who are nervous about standardized tests, or who haven’t taken very many.</p>
<p>At this point, I have read Carol Dweck’s book on mindsets, but I have not read her journal articles (very few are available on-line, and I haven’t decided yet whether to request them from remote storage or via inter-library loan).</p>
<p>There are three major points on which I agree with Dweck:
a) Qualities that we often classify as “ability” or even as “natural ability” can be enhanced significantly by well-directed hard work. On the basis of my own experience, I believe that taking a difficult mathematics class can make a person “smarter.” I am inclined to believe that anyone can learn anything at any time. I might even argue that one can learn to speak a foreign language without an accent, as an adult. One does need to pick an accessible starting point, set a realistic pace, devote adequate time, and be willing to look foolish along the way.
b) If a student imagines that effort is only required of those who are not naturally gifted, the student is headed for trouble in any field.
c) The belief that analytical or problem-solving skills can be learned is very helpful in acquiring those skills.</p>
<p>However, I still have major reservations about Dweck’s work, based on what I’ve read so far.</p>
<p>In one set of experiments, Dweck and her collaborators worked with upper elementary children. They provided a set of somewhat challenging problems for the children, and then divided them into two groups, one praised for their effort and the other praised for their intelligence. When faced later with additional problems, the students who had been praised for their intelligence tended to shy away from the problems, while the students who had been praised for effort approached them with greater enthusiasm and success. When asked to write a letter to a student in another school, to describe their experiences, quite a few of the students who had been praised for their intelligence misrepresented their performance as better than it had actually been. All students were “debriefed” and encouraged to adopt the “growth mindset.” </p>
<p>Here are some of my questions/reservations:
a) Why was it apparently possible for Dweck and her collaborators to override the influence of parents and teachers? Do you find it believable that students had neither the growth mindset nor the fixed mindset until Dweck and collaborators divided them into the “effort” vs. “intelligence” groups?
b) How was the adequacy of the debriefing determined? I am reminded of a teacher’s experiment on discrimination involving blue-eyed vs. brown-eyed students, run in a school in Iowa (I think) years ago. The experiment was well-intended, to teach that discrimination is hurtful and irrational. Yet some of the students, speaking of the experiment years later, still felt hurt by the experiment itself–certainly not the original intention. Dweck’s experiment is definitely conveying to the students that adults (even professors) may deliberately misrepresent facts. Of course, they need to know this at some point. But in Dweck’s experiment, how could the students be certain when the misrepresentation was being made? The students are supposed to realize that it was made in the effort/intelligence division. But it is not clear to me that a student might not conclude that the misrepresentation occurred during the debriefing, instead.
c) Why did Dweck think that the students believed the initial praise? In the experiment, the psychologist is misrepresenting the situation to the student, whether the student is being praised for effort or for intelligence. But at least the psychologist personally believes that effort is the key to success, so this praise has some degree of legitimacy. On the other hand, the praise for intelligence is phony through and through. A perceptive upper-elementary child who has been falsely praised for intelligence might well withdraw cooperation later in the experiment, for reasons that have nothing to do with mindsets.
d) In commenting on the children who misrepresented their scores, Dweck remarks that praising the children for intelligence had turned them into liars. (I’m sorry that I don’t have her book at hand. The word “liars” was definitely used.) Talk about a fixed mindset!</p>
<p>Separately from the experiment, there is a discussion toward the end of Dweck’s book, about a middle-school girl who was a very high academic achiever (and first-chair flautist in the middle-school orchestra, if I recall accurately). The girl was applying to a very selective high school. She was experiencing stomach pain, eventually traced to an ulcer. Dweck interpreted the ulcer as a sign of high stress, and persuaded the parents to send their daughter to a much lower-key high school.</p>
<p>The book was published AFTER the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine had been awarded to Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, for their discovery of the role of Helicobacter pylori in causing ulcers. From the Nobel Foundation site:
“It is now firmly established that Helicobacter pylori causes more than 90% of duodenal ulcers and up to 80% of gastric ulcers. The link between Helicobacter pylori infection and subsequent gastritis and peptic ulcer disease has been established through studies of human volunteers, antibiotic treatment studies and epidemiological studies.”
[Press</a> Release: The 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine](<a href=“http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2005/press.html]Press”>http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2005/press.html)</p>
<p>I hope that the high-school choice has worked out well for the girl in the long run. Also, I presume that Dweck gave the advice before October 2005, if not before the research on H. pylori itself was done. Still, I find this a discomfiting anecdote to include in the book.</p>
<p>And incidentally, thanks for the compliments.</p>
<p>I’ll mention again that xiggi’s method is great, if prep is indicated.</p>
<p>(I commented about Dweck’s work, because it was mentioned earlier on this thread, and on at least one other thread, several months ago.)</p>
<p>No prep = your own damn fault.</p>
<p>Y’know, xiggi, I think if there were a problem taking the test in a timely manner, or struggling over questions, that you’d have a point. That is, for students that have that problem, I might agree, if they have a goal of having a particular score. In our case, I and later my son always had extra time leftover on the test. My point was that while we theoretically <em>could</em> have done some sort of prep and gotten higher scores, it’s not a family value in our home to spend time on the SAT, or on prep for it. We value our time differently.</p>
<p>I think that as a family, we fall into a number of QM’s categories – high scoring parents, a household vocabulary that exceeds the silly vocabularly lists, much outside reading, etc. My daughter is another story; I’m sure she could increase her SAT score by spending hours in SAT prep courses, but it would be ridiculous to work on something that her target schools don’t value highly.</p>
<p>I’m not saying no one should prep. I’m saying that prep is not a value in our household, and I would probably have teased my son had he felt the need to do it. We’re both satisfied that he made the right choice, because he’s at his dream school with a full ride.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
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<p>This statement just illustrates a very important point: a high SAT score does not correlate with wisdom.</p>