Since the University of California abandoned the SAT and ACT, thousands of faculty say it’s admitting students who aren’t prepared for the coursework. Will UC listen?
Whatever happened to the SAT test? My generation couldn’t get into a decent university without a respectable SAT score. Did universities decide enrollment money was more important than the school’s reputation?
SAT only tests for like middle school math. and it was dropped by a lot of places as a requirement to apply.
SAT also is dumb, because all it really tests is how well you take the SAT. most rich kids just hire tutors to ace it. my own nephew upped his score by 200 points on it after his parents dropped $5K in SAT prep tutors. he is terrible at math, but he nailed the SAT. he’s never taking calculus anyway and he hates math, but he has a B+ in calculus. like most people his age, he can’t do arithmetic in his head, let alone algebra, because everything is on his phone and every tip he’s paid at a restaurant is a button on a screen.
It is not a measure of mathematical ability or knowledge in any way. The SAT tutors basically just teach you how to guess more quickly because the highest score comes not from knowing things, but answering the most amount of questions in the alloted time. It’s a test of time management more than anything else.
They used to have more advanced SAT subject tests, but those are no longer around. I took one that covered pre-calc, but that was 25 years ago. I had to submit SAT and three SAT subject tests for my college applications. I aced all those SAT tests. I still got my ass handed to me freshman year and almost failed out of freshman calculus. Basically freshman calclus was Calc 1 and 2 compressed into one semester and proof-focused… I had never seen a proof in my life… so yeah I barely passed because all I had been taught was calc 1 in terms of using algebraic equations. the exams for that class were basically asking us to derive proofs for principles of calculus…
The truth is Calculus at bumfucksville HS is not the same as it as St John’s Prep. And a college has a hard time accounting for that, and so do the students. So you have two students going into Calc 2 at uni, who have wildly different backgrounds, though they took the same coursework, technically. Hell I had friends who took AP calculus and then failed/struggled college calculus the next year…
Whatever happened to the SAT test? My generation couldn’t get into a decent university without a respectable SAT score. Did universities decide enrollment money was more important than the school’s reputation?
SAT only tests for like middle school math. and it was dropped by a lot of places as a requirement to apply.
SAT also is dumb, because all it really tests is how well you take the SAT. most rich kids just hire tutors to ace it. my own nephew upped his score by 200 points on it after his parents dropped $5K in SAT prep tutors. he is terrible at math, but he nailed the SAT. he’s never taking calculus anyway and he hates math, but he has a B+ in calculus. like most people his age, he can’t do arithmetic in his head, let alone algebra, because everything is on his phone and every tip he’s paid at a restaurant is a button on a screen.
It is not a measure of mathematical ability or knowledge in any way. The SAT tutors basically just teach you how to guess more quickly because the highest score comes not from knowing things, but answering the most amount of questions in the alloted time. It’s a test of time management more than anything else.
They used to have more advanced SAT subject tests, but those are no longer around. I took one that covered pre-calc, but that was 25 years ago. I had to submit SAT and three SAT subject tests for my college applications. I aced all those SAT tests. I still got my ass handed to me freshman year and almost failed out of freshman calculus. Basically freshman calclus was Calc 1 and 2 compressed into one semester and proof-focused… I had never seen a proof in my life… so yeah I barely passed because all I had been taught was calc 1 in terms of using algebraic equations. the exams for that class were basically asking us to derive proofs for principles of calculus…
The truth is Calculus at bumfucksville HS is not the same as it as St John’s Prep. And a college has a hard time accounting for that, and so do the students. So you have two students going into Calc 2 at uni, who have wildly different backgrounds, though they took the same coursework, technically. Hell I had friends who took AP calculus and then failed/struggled college calculus the next year…