Lowest Raw Score Ever on the SAT 747
An anonymous reader writes "Lowest Raw Score Ever on the SAT. Relax! You are practically guaranteed to have done better on the SAT than this guy! But the competition for most extreme negative raw score is just beginning..."
Top 2% (Score:5, Interesting)
(That's only about 2.5\sigma from the mean...)
Hrm (Score:4, Interesting)
Lowest REAL SAT score? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bush (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hrm (Score:2, Interesting)
What does it measure though? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in college now, and did relatively well on my SAT, but I'm a slacker... especially when it comes to academics. Just a plain lazy bastard.
The thing is that I had alot of friends who didn't do so well on the SAT, but they got into their undergrad school and worked their butt off and are now on their way to Med school. Now granted, in order to get into a good one, you still have to go through a nasty little M-CAT, something I know nothing about.
It seems though that something like the SAT shows little more than how you prepare for a very specific test and how you perform on a very specific day. What it shows to a lesser degree is your level of persistence, self discipline and perhaps most notably, your common sense. I have alot of friends who are going to be sucessful at what they do someday, but just don't do well sitting in a room answering multiple choice questions for three hours.
Perhaps this is why its a blessing that your standardized test scores are not the only critieria for admitance into higher learning institutions.
Re:Makes me feel good. (Score:2, Interesting)
My friend goes to UC Santa Cruz and is always trying to convince me to quit my job and go to school. I'm reluctant, and a little discouraged. Do I even have a chance at getting accepted, considering my fairly crappy SAT score and mediocre grades in HS? I've been working full time in IT since I got out of HS (about 4 years). I like having a job more than I ever liked school, but after so long working at tedious jobs, and with the IT market looking so grim, I'm starting to consider it. Still, I read stories in the SF Chronicle about tougher entrance requirements, more competition, etc. Plus it's been so long since I was in a classroom, I don't know if I could ajust. Could I even get accepted? Any advice for a stagnating geek?
Re:Best line (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Top 2% (Score:5, Interesting)
Though I'll agree with you about the disturbing factor - I consider myself to be intelligent, but if I'm in the top 2% of all humanity, then God help us!
MCAS vs SAT (Score:5, Interesting)
Essay questions on the SAT (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, without a keyboard and a spellchecker I'm nothing! My handwriting is absolutely terrible. But none of that matters in collage, since papers will be turned in after being typed on a computer. And even if a grader isn't going to look at those things specifically, they'll still be affected by them, as well as whether or not they agree with the essay. Not to mention the fact that it's going to be insanely expensive to grade these things. They'll need about 1,500 graders each grading 1,500 papers. Can you imagine grading that many boring essays about random subjects? My brain would just go numb. The only fair way to do it would be to have each essay graded by a diverse group of graders, and then average the score. But that would cost even more per test. Or perhaps they could figure out some way to grade essays by a computer. Teach a neural net the properties of a good essay and see what it comes up with.
Or they could just not do it...
My own minirant (Score:4, Interesting)
1. The tutors who get the money for test preps
2. Annoying egos (the same people who "failed" a test because they got a 96% and not a 99%)
3. Distinguishing people with high gpas without any other significant experience in h.s.
I think that was one of the things I hated most about high school.
it's easy, just double bubble! (Score:4, Interesting)
My experience... (Score:5, Interesting)
The test proctor, a Geometry teacher, didn't like this very much and sent me to the principal's office. I gladly took my test answer sheet up to the principal's office and told them the story I wrote here. The principal took the answer sheet and showed it to a couple of people around the office, presumably to get second and third (reinforcing) opinions, and then returned the test sheet to me and told me to get back to class, finish the test, "and if she has any further problem with this, send her to me."
My first reaction was, whoa, "send her to you"?! I don't have that authority. She made me understand that I had done nothing wrong and should definitely not be punished for it. (To be honest, I do not remember if my main purpose was to be a smartass or to promote social colorblind-ness, but it shouldn't matter if anyone reads it properly.)
Anyway, the moral of this story is: if you let them get used to you simply falling into line and always doing the expected thing, you get locked into it. On the other hand, if you let them know you're just less than predictable, and perhaps even a bit crazy or eccentric, then you can get away with much more and even get them to think harder about things. I succeeded that day, and my ego swelled from that of a skinny, nerdy white boy into that of a taller, more confident, skinny, nerdy white boy. :-)
Yeah, I feel that ALL the time. Marching to the beat of a different drum is liberating, but self-liberation is viewed as insanity until it catches on...p.s.-- my favorite line from Colin Fahey's site:
MCAS is f*cked up (Score:3, Interesting)
The MCAS shouldnt even exist. They only create these things to keep poor people from going to college.
The MCAS is setup so that if you fail it, you can NEVER go to college, you can NEVER get a diploma, and all you get is some stupid certificate.
Alot of kids who went to shitty schools have to either become very mature at a young age and take matters into their own hands and teach themselves, or they are going to fail that test and never go to college.
Seems like class Warfare to me.
I'm from MA as well AC, and the MCAS sucks. Its just class warfare.
A kid could get all As in their shitty school and fail the MCAS because their school has books from the 1970s and 1980s while the richer more upper class schools have the newest books, best teaching materials
Thank god for the internet, kids who have no money might have a chance.
Re:My own minirant (Score:2, Interesting)
So, there are courses, books and private tutoring programs to improve those abilities. So what? Does it reallly matter _how_ you acquire those skills, as long as you have them? Does it matter whether someone is good at picking out the relevant bits (or faulty premises) from a paper because they're naturally talented at it, or because they've practiced hard at doing it? In either case, they will have good use for that skill in school (and, arguably, in life).
I don't think anybody have ever claimed these tests measure innate ability; they claim they are a decent measure of how well you are expected to do in higher education. Well, being able and motivated to compensate for lower talent by extra work is certainly as good a characteristic as being able to get good scores without trying.
Re:SATs are a filtering device (Score:2, Interesting)
In this case, the SAT measured our desire to get into college - not our aptitude for college. Its obvious that we would succeed in college based on our GPA, college essays, and other parts of our application. But by taking the SATs we showed the admissions board that we were willing to jump through a few hoops to get to college. We were willing to make a time commitment to school and a test that was meaningless and the admission boards at the various schools we are attending now took that into account. Obviously, if we lacked the fortitude just to take one more standardized test then any college would be justified in rejecting us.
Re:My experience... (Score:5, Interesting)
"I refuse to answer the essay portion of this test on the grounds that any answer I give will be judged subjectively and any grade not given by a machine is arbitrary. As proof I submit that if I were to grade my answer to this question, I would give myself full credit."
SAT verbal != word memorization (Score:3, Interesting)
The next time you speak about Indians, do a favour, don't generalise, okay?
I'm an Indian, and five years back, I did give the SAT's, that's SAT I and SAT II. My preparation for SAT II- Writing (which, IMHO, is the toughest it can get for verbal tests at pre-UG levels, although, admittedly, it doesn't test verbal reasoning, but writing skills) was as follows:-
a) Read up on a test prep book,
b) Practise with a couple of old papers,
c)That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Actually, no, that's a lie. I did something else.
Heck, it's been five years now, the world was much younger then; yes, I spent two hours doing something else that evening before the test. You see, I couldnt bear the excitement and, when no one was around, decided to check out this new-fangled 'internet' thing that my dad and I somehow installed on our family PC.
It was a fascinating experience; there were many new things to learn. I learnt that, for instance, a certain low-profile website [hotmail.com], offered email for virtually nothing! That, you could get all the news you want, based on your preferences, delivered to your very own inbox, again, free of cost!. I even learnt that a certain lady [aishwarya-rai.com] could adorn my wallpaper and that, it might start getting itchy in your pants if you stare at her picture for a while....
Let's just say that I think I did well for my 770 in SAT II Writing.
Colin is an interesting fellow.... (Score:5, Interesting)
He went on hiatus and never really came back. I heard about this particular stunt this morning from a coworker, best ten minutes of the day...
My thoughts were that this would be fun to gamble on... say put together pools or spread objectives for various test takers and bet money on how close they will come to their goals. Say you've got a guy who says he can get the absolute average... well you bet on him getting within 20 points or you say noway and take the smaller gain, whatever.. gambling on people's ability to read the test and perform how ever they want to sounds quite interesting to me...
Ummmmm Not too fast (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, yes, it was back in the day when the score meant a little more....so many changes to try to "even it out" for a number of reason's have probably made my friends score != Colin's score (i.e. for instance, we had no verbal stuff at all.....lots and lots of questions on paper).
My friend was not really expected to go to College, he did go(cooking school). It's really too bad because he was not a dumb kid. Well....OK, in book smarts he was. And I guess it was proven.
I should laugh....I got a 1070 (29 ACT though). I was the butt of many jokes in my school. It was a small class (83 graduating) from a college town in NY. The problem was, it was alot of college professors kids in there (mixed in with farmers and other locals) who were braniacs and skewed the test scores through the roof. Not that that's a bad thing, it makes you strive to keep up.
Re:The need for a well rounded education (Score:3, Interesting)
Learn Homeric and Attic Greek; and translate portions of Homer, Aristotle, the New Testament
Learn French and translate various writers -- Montaigne, for example
Read almost all of these books [mirror.org], in whole or in part -- a list which includes everything from Plato to Shakespeare to Heidegger to Smith to Austen to Marx
Study mathematics all four years, working from Euclid's Elements, through Newton and Leibniz's invention of the Calculus, and on through non-Euclidean geometry, Cantor, and others
Study music for one year; including history, theory, composition, and limited performance
Study laboratory science for three years; reading primary works and recapitulating experimentation spanning, for example, Lavoisier to Dalton to Miliken, Galen to Darwin, Newton to Einstein, and others
A partial semester of painting and sculpture
This is not just a gloss on the the so-called "Great Books"; and it's certainly not purely humanities or an impoverished "history or science" curriculum, either. It's heavy on both the math/science and on literature/philosophy -- not to mention that the year of music is the equivalent in some ways to more than a year at conservatory. Finally, it's really a lot of very difficult work.
Of course, it's not called a "university", it's called a "college" since it's integral and singular. This is what higher education was like in the past, and it indeed does live on in the US. St. John's is in fact the third oldest college in the US (behind William & Mary and Harvard); but the "New Program" has only existed since 1929.
Re:Top 2% (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, our society doesn't generally deal well with extreme intelligence. As soon as it is realized that you score well on standardized tests (which is what these measures actually measure, not "intelligence"), there is extraordinary pressure not to "waste" that intelligence. It is usually assuming that a rigorous program of schooling-- and usually in schools controlled by people who are decidedly average intelligence-wise-- is the best course. This is probably a mistake.
Most schools are not designed to nurture independent learning (or thought, really). The medium is a large part of the message and that message is, "obey arbitrary authority, move around at the sound of the bell, you are smart enough to learn the world's history, physics, and advanced match, but you are not smart enough to manage your own time or decide who should teach you what."
Is it any wonder, then, that some of the nation's brightest stars get bored or upset or choose fairly antisocial ways of expressing themselves? The worst case is when those "smart" kids come from otherwise average families. Those parents may act like they've hit the lottery, or simply continue to apply pressure (apparently even subtle sticks are more common than any kind of carrot in these situations) to urge the kid to "use their full potential" or whatever. It's a bit like a gardener who would try to grow his plants faster by sitting in the garden and pulling on the tops of the plants.
Which schools? (Score:5, Interesting)
MCAT vs SAT vs ACT (Score:3, Interesting)
No, in order to get into any American or Caribbean medical school you need to take the MCAT. Hopkins used to take ACT scores but changed over a few years ago, and a few BS/MD programs will still do that, but most of those only admit high school students for a 6-year ride (Brown, Kansas City-Missouri, etc.; Miami-FL rolls theirs such that FL residents can apply in high school or after first year)
I'm in medical school now, having got a 32 on the MCAT. If you want an SAT equivalent of the MCAT, look at the ACT: I think that the MCAT and ACT are made by the same folks. On both tests you are tested on what you know instead of your ability to prepare for the specific test. There were people in my class who cracked 1500 on the SAT but did not get better than 30 on the ACT, and lots of folks got much higher ACT scores than SAT. Colleges are starting to figure this out, especially given that the SAT (and IMO GRE) are basically assinine exams designed to see who can think in the same way as the test-takers.
The penalties for guessing on the SAT will hamper bright students and IMO artificially deflate scores. Most of the Verbal section of the SAT is, again, a matter of test-taking: skip the hardest sections and get back to them later (use this strategy for the MCAT too) The ACT seemed to be more comprehensive and much more straight-forward, maybe that is due to my own bias and scores. Most schools take both now, if you want to answer every question then take the ACT. Note that the MCAT does not penalize you for guessing, they know that the scores will be low since the test is bell-curved nationally anyway. Averages run around 8.5 / category, 3 numerically graded categories and a writing section with a letter attached (J-T, avg = O or so), good score = 30+.
BTW, if you're getting ready to take the MCAT, remember 3 things:
1) take a prep course. I swear by Kaplan and will use them for step I, others think Princeton Review is the key.
2) leave the semester before the exam (take it in april and if need be again in august) open to a fairly light load. I took 18 hours that semester and would have done 12 in retrospect.
3) Study constantly, even over spring break. If you can do well in april it saves you a summer of grief, not to mention that everyone taking it in april has a class load to deal with.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Interesting)
I would prefer an honest President to either. No IQ score that is above the mean has much significance and if you go more than an SD above the mean there is NO significance. IQ tests were developed to measure the progress of mental patients under various therapies. They were never designed as general purpose tests.
Stephen Jay Gould gives the definitive debunking of IQ tests in The Mismeasure of Man. There is a big history of junk science, mostly in the service of racist theories of eugenics. Lots of untested facts being repeated for decades etc.
One of the many IQ myths is that you can't improve your score with practice. That is absolute rubbish. I had to practice IQ tests every week when I was 10 to take the exam for the senior school. I ended up with perfect scores on the multiple choice questions for several weeks in a row.
Getting back to his fraudulency, the guy has no character and no honesty. He lied to sell his tax cut and he lied to get his war. He promised not to bust the budget and then did exactly that, he even lied about the alleged 'trifecta' of exclusions to his promise. He never told the US people that there were exceptions, it never appeared in any press release of speech. Not only is he a liar, it is a character issue, he is in effect saying 'I had my fingers crossed behind my back'.
Before Bush's war the justification given was scary weapons of mass destruction. After the 'proof' that nuclear material had been bought from Niger was shown to be a fraud he invades anyway (or at least orders the army to). Then afterwards the story changes 'oh it was just regime change all along'. I wonder what the story is going to be once the funddies elect an ayatollah.
I suspect that after he looses the 2004 election the aircraft carrier antics are going to be seen in a different light. He is campaigning on his national guard stint - risky at best when daddy pulled strings to get the place and especially so when you then went AWOL for a year.
It is really difficult after being lied to to believe anything the man says.
Re:Old statistics puzzle (Score:3, Interesting)
A teacher gives a true false test to three students. One gets 100% correct so gets an 'A'. One gets 50% correct so gets an 'F'. The third gets none correct but the teacher still gives him an 'A'. Why?
And they don't even score it correctly (Score:3, Interesting)
Haven't had a lot of respect for SAT or tests in general every since. Maybe that's why I'm such a cynical bastard
Closed Universe (Score:5, Interesting)
My 13 year-old son spends an inordinate amount of time in school studying and practicing for a thing called a TAKS test here in Texas. You have to pass it or you don't graduate to the next grade (that's the intention, anyway). What skill, exactly, is he learning? As far as I can tell, the skill is "how to take the TAKS test" -- something very useful in the post-school world, I'm sure.
Very frustrating, at times.
Re:Top 2% (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea is that each section of the SAT is theoretically scored from 0 to 1000, with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100 points. After calculating the scores, they drop the low and high outliers and shift them to 200 or 800 respectively, keeping three standard deviations from the mean.
Re:Top 2% (Score:1, Interesting)
- 50th percentile: 50.0% is 3 billion (100 IQ)
- 80th percentile: 20.0% is 1.2 billion (112 IQ)
- 90th percentile: 10.0% is 600 million (119 IQ)
- 95th percentile: 5.0% is 300 million (124 IQ)
- 98th percnetile: 2.0% is 120 million (130 IQ)
- 99th percentile: 1.0% is 60 million (134 IQ)
- 99.5th percentile: 0.5% is 30 million (137 IQ)
- 99.8th percentile: 0.2% is 12 million (142 IQ)
- 99.9th percentile: 0.1% is 6 million (144 IQ)
Isn't it a bit humbling to know that no matter how smart you think you are, there are probably millions of people alive today who are even smarter?Urban legends (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Justice
2) Truth
20) Happiness
Generally it was a great opportunity to blather on. Anyway, when I arrived there was this great fuss. Apparently, in the previous year one of the questions had been simply "Courage", to which one student had written "This is." The story - true or not - is that he was given perfect marks for the essay, and got to doodle for the remaining two hours and 59 minutes...
Re:Bush (Score:2, Interesting)
You can also fail to fill in any declaration, stating that you do not have a colour receiver. And as I see it, the ball is in their court.
Either they have to monitor you and see if you are secretly watching a TV with their little vans (easily evaded with a Faraday Cage in the living room!), or get a warrent to search the premises.
Should be hilarious if they get a warrent and then fail to find anything. I Wonder what your legal recourse would be then, given their spurious assertion that you had a TV, with no facts to back them up?
I had this problem several years ago, I bought a small TV as a Christmas present for use at a friend's house (with their kid's N64). Of course I gave my details at the shop as they where required for a warranty, What I didn't realise is that the shop is legally required to inform the Licensing Authority of your purchase (Something which I might add was not made clear, and something I had words with the shop about).
Shortly after Xmas I started receiving the letters, telling me I wasn't licensed and I may have to pay a fine of £1000, or I could just fill in the declaration.
I'm afraid I just ignored the letters, it was their assumption that was wrong, and I wasn't going to waste my time correcting them.
A few months later, a guy turned up on my doorstep and we had the following (paraphrased) conversation:
Him: "Hello, I'm MR X from the Licensing Authority, Can I see your TV license please?"
Me: "No"
Him: "Do you have a license?"
Me: "You know I don't or we wouldn't be stood on my doorstep having this conversation."
Him: "Can I inspect your property to prove you don't have a TV?"
Me: "No"
Him: "I can have a warrent issued, and we can come back and inspect then. Or you can just let me look around the property now, and this whole problem goes away. Can I come in please?"
Me: "No"
Him: "I'll have to go and get a warrant then."
Me: "Yes you will won't you"
That was the last I heard of it...
Although It should be said that I did dismantle my Faraday Cage that evening and sold the TV on e-bay
Blah, not so challenging (Score:2, Interesting)
Come on! how hard is it to find the right
answer and then shooting for the wrong answer?
He has enough training and knowledge to master
that, so it wouldn't have been difficult to
score that 1600 (and the analogous fat 0) -
and even easier with the recentering crap
the college board is doing now a days.
The challenge would have been to shoot for
a very specific score. Try that!
Re:Essay questions on the SAT (Score:3, Interesting)
AP (Advanced Placement) exams have a free response section on all tests. For the math APs the free response is pretty objective - you get a point for this setup, a point for that answer, or a point for this explanation, but all of that is still graded by hand. Most other exams, at least those in English, have three essays that make up more than half of the total score.
For example, in both the US and European History exams, there are two essays dealing with two different time periods and an essay on several provided documents. For the English Literature exam, there is an essay on poetry analysis, prose analysis, and an "open question" where the student provides a work he has read to answer the topic.
All AP free responses are graded on a scale of 1-9, the higher the better. Every summer, hundreds of teachers get together in a large gym or similar structure and sit down to grade them. The graders are given examples of each type of essay and grade until they grade as the College Board wants them to - usually only takes a day. Then they're turned loose on the real ones. The process takes 1-2 weeks.
In terms of quality control, random essays are taken out and re-graded. Scores on essays are correlated to scores on the multiple choice sections. All in all, the graders I know say it is frighteningly consistent. By the end of the day their brains are numb, but scores are still consistent.
It works, and has worked well, since the 1970's. I'm just suprised that the SAT's haven't gone to an essay sooner.
Re:Top 2% (Score:5, Interesting)
The odd thing, from my perspective, is that most of my friends get along just fine. I tend to consort with people about as smart as I am (146 IQ, 36 ACT, 1490 SAT, if you think standardized tests have much to do with intelligence), and they don't have the problems I have. I think my failure, and my brother's before mine, has more to do with the type of habits we've learned from our parents than with our intelligence. My parents are both fairly anti-establishment, and have both made relatively successful careers despite (or in my dad's case, because of) that. They've taught my brother and me to hold similar views.
While I call them anti-establishment, I don't mean in a knee-jerk kind of way. There are elements in the System that my parents believe in, and there are elements that they don't believe in. They taught my brother and me to weigh the facts and decide for ourselves what we believe and how to behave because of it. Now, I can't vouch for my brother, but a big part of any explanation for my poor performance in high school isn't so much apathy for learning itself as for demonstrating that I've learned something. I love reading Shakespeare, but I'm not much for doing some silly homework assignment meant to prove to the teacher that I've done the reading. I read books about physics in my spare time, so why should I bother completing some little bit of physics homework? My biggest complaint is classes that grade based on attendance. Quote from my piano teacher this past semester: "I am sure this section was the only one you could fit into your schedule, but if you ever have a chance to take another class piano course, try to schedule for later time; so that your grade will reflect what you can on the keyboard [sic], not when you wake up." That was in an email informing me I had gotten a C in the course. Now, why should what time I wake up ever, ever affect my grade in a class? I obviously came to class enough that she knew I could play the instrument as well as...well, as well as a bassoon major can be expected to; why should I get a C because I didn't come any more often than that? And this is in college!
Too often, performance in school reflect not a person's ability, nor their commitment, nor anything else that's relevant, but instead their ability to get up in the morning, follow a set schedule, do what they're told, and not get into any trouble (since suspensions, at least at my former high school, count as unexcused absences which then affect a person's grade adversely).
Re:My own minirant (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I think taking the Kaplan course (in some/most cases, not all) reflects the obsession to do well on the SAT test, period. Not improve abilities or whatever. If anyone has taken the test and wants to say otherwise, then your opinion of it may very well be more credible than mine. This is just my perception from the people I know who have taken it.
Hehe I like your SAT story. I think that it may be a flaw within a single test trying to determine that. Your case, like others, is probably just another that the SAT's crystal ball fails to predict. I don't see anything better out there that could replace the SAT. I think most of what just annoys me is people obsessing over getting a high score. This would include the stereotype I mentioned in my first post of some people freaking out over getting a 96% instead of a 99%
Re:Top 2% (Score:1, Interesting)
I was Stanford-Binet tested in 1st grade (1976), and scored 196. (This wasn't shared with me until I found out by accident in high school) My parents got involved in the Gifted Children's Association, and the local school district (Los Angeles Unified)'s magnet schools never let me down, though my classmates and I moved around a lot:
1st-2nd grade: Pull out programs, nothing that caused me to be stigmatized or socially bereft.
2nd grade: We move so I can attend an elementary school with a highly gifted magnet program - classmates are all in the program, and you mostly play with folks in your class at these ages anyway.
3-6th grade: The highly gifted magnet changes locations every year or two, so lots of bussing, but it's all my friends moving around.
7-9th grade: Attended a highly gifted magnet jr. high school. 64 in my cohort. Some stigmatization from students at the school not in the "maggot program", but nothing serious. Probably helps that the host school switches to 6-8 grade, so it's only us 64 who are 9th graders when that time comes. LAUSD also had a separate gifted magnet elsewhere ("gifted" and "highly gifted" had specific definitions; the former included IQ and non-IQ talents, the latter required IQ 145)
10-12th grade: No more highly gifted programs, but magnet schools in Humanities, Math/Science, and a few other subjects. Went to one of those, got an excellent education, no sigificant social issues. About 3-4 classes/semester that are "within the magnet" and 2-3 that are "within the host school", so ample opportunities for hanging out with everyone.
In these programs I was afforded astounding educational opportunities and an incredibly good group of peers, many of whom I'm still in touch with (in fact, I'm married, with child, to my high school best friend). And I relate fine to everyone else, thank you.
The implications of IQ testing depend a great deal on the community support.