... are evil and worthless. I'm a junior at the UW, and last week, I began training to become a SAT prep teacher at Princeton Review. Basically, I'll get to teach a bunch og high schoolers freaking out about college how to take an SAT. And yes, it pays, very nicely.
I thought I'd share what I've learned so far in my training, since undoubtably, a lot of you are going to take SAT's soon. The SAT is crap. Its worthless. And everyone does it. Now, there is another type of test you can take, the ACT, which actually does somewhat measure your scholastic aptitude. The SAT DOES NOT. Its a bullshit test created by the ETS (people that run College Board - Third largest nonprofit earnings last year behind #2, the Red Cross and #3, the Catholic Church...) set up so that given a set of students, a nice bell curve will surely appear.
Basically, ETS achieves this by setting up the test so that it will fool you. They make tricky questions and bullshit weak answers in order to snare as many students as possible. Instead of hard questions, they give you hard answers. Its not like any other test you'll have ever taken. Its not set up to be like one. Thus, to do good, dont treat it like a normal test.
And thats not even it. Theres so much more wrong with this test. Heres some other fun facts:
- The SAT is actually terrible at predicting a students average GPA. Instead, it does much better at predicting three other factors: Your race, your gender and your family's average income.
- The SAT changed last year to add an essay section. That however, wasnt the biggest change. Its now 4 hours long, a full hour longer than before. No material was cut to make way for the essay and 3 NEW SECTIONS.
-And they still only give you 11 minutes of total break - Two 5 min breaks and one 1 min stretch break. Want to know why kids get so many questions wrong after the 2nd hour of testing?
Please guys, trust me on this - if you want good SAT's, get a book on how to take them or take a class if you have the money. Its a bullshit requirement in my opinion, but its still a requirement, so work the system and dont fall for the ETS traps. Studying and doing good in school is by no means an assurance you will do good on them.
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