Trust me when I say, get yourself an 800 — it feels good — and it’s a good that keeps on giving. I need to break that baby out when I’m feeling down.  Seeing it in print like that made me realize, I’ve got a little mood alterer here.

Here’s a link to the story below in the February issue of  Westchester Magazine.

If I could leave you with one piece of advice, having learned from the error of my ways, here it is:

Be Methodical

Ok, got it?

Don’t worry if not — I’ve got a blog post on the matter that’s marinating.

….Tip by Tip….

Resource and Tips pages will continue to be filled up over the next few days (weeks…..months)….Check out the links on the righthand navigation bar for updates.

And the Books page (my personal passion), well, stay tuned.  If I learned nothing else last year, I have a visceral understanding now that everything takes more time than I think it will.

1. Score Decline: College Board Report on SAT Score Decline, 1977. Think: Mad Men meets the SAT. Fun to read…nostalgia.
2. Fair Test Rules: The SAT Standard Testing Room Manual published by ETS. READ PAGES 1-11 before taking the SAT (CAPs and BOLD on purpose, for emphasis). Know your rights as a test taker. You deserve a fair test experience. Not knowing your rights could be reflected in your score (said from firsthand experience). Read this post for more details.
3. Looking for your old SAT Scores?  Click on this College Board link and follow the directions.
4. 3 FREE Official College Board SATs: January 2006 SAT, October 2005 SAT, and March 2005 SAT.
5. Best SAT Sites: Credible information without having to wade through the College Board’s site (overwhelming) or College Confidential (the wild west): Erik the Red, PWNtheSAT, Ultimate SAT Verbal.

More more more tk soon…..

llustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

FAQ #3: 

Q. How can I find out my old SAT scores?  

A. Click on this College Board link and follow the directions.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

Lorna Sheridan from Sonoma News included me in her education column:

At least once a week, someone asks me some variation of: “What’s the best month to take the SAT?”  ”Aren’t some tests harder than others?” “Shouldn’t I steer clear of October because that’s when all the smart kids take the SAT?” etc. etc. etc.

Without really knowing why I’m saying this, I always respond, “Don’t worry about it.” (Somehow, this just-above-average-SAT-math-scoring-brain knows, that’s why they call it “a curve.”)

I know, I know…there are some months when the test is easier or harder, and Erik the Red has posted everything there is to know about the history of such months, though I can’t find any pattern….

Personally, I don’t think it’s a good use of one’s most precious SAT resource (i.e. attention).

That said, I did take the time today to plot my SAT scores from 2011 on “the curve,” to see if there was any light to be shed from firsthand experience.

The short answer is, there isn’t (though if you see something relevant that I missed, please let me know).

Red is hard. Yellow is medium. Green is easy.

The little red boxes are my 2011 SAT Scores.

WRITING:

READING:

MATH:

And if you still need more convincing about this curve thing,  read PWN the SAT’s post on the matter.

Incidentally, 1982 happens to be the nadir of SAT scores, as well as the year I first took the SAT in high school (twice).  Erik the Red suggested that maybe I brought down the curve.

Haha.

Possibly.

But, my first thought was, “I knew it; I was hampered!” (Though hampered by what, I have no idea.)

I’m really looking forward to reading this College Board report about the score decline this evening, to see what they have to say about the matter.

From the top of page 44, (the summary chapter):

“If you turned to this concluding section for a quick and easy understanding of the panel’s views on the decline of test scores, you are indulging in a practice like some of the educational shortcuts that may have contributed to the decline.” 

(Might that be a little bit of College Board humor?)

llustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

One of the many joyful aspects of this project has been the encouraging emails, some of which ask questions that I always attempt to answer promptly, and with gusto.

(I’m not perfect though, so if I didn’t respond to your email with prompt gusto — I am so sorry.  Email me again, ok?  I have, on rare and desperate occasions, resorted to email bankruptcy.)

Anyhoo, a primary intention behind this project was always to share what I learned along the way, as much as it was about trying to get the perfect SAT score myself. Hopefully I can spare others some of the wheel-spinning I experienced.

Many of questions I receive are similar, so I’m going to attempt to house them on the FAQ tab of this site (righthand side).

The other place to check on the site for useful information (hopefully), is the Solutions tab (also located on the righthand side), where I attempted to share the lessons I learned along the way (for all three sections).

Ok, FAQ #1 (or some variation of), isthe most frequently asked FAQ:

Q.  Could you share some tips on how to tackle the reading passages and how to know you’re picking the right answers?

     A. Read the passage fast(ish), and the Q & Aslooooowwwwwly.  Make sure you have a good, birds eye view, high level idea of what the passage is about.

When you get to the answer choices, you can often knock out 3 of them, just on the basis that they are silly, stupid, or obviously not right, which then gets you down to two answers to choose from.

If you have time to go back to the passage and clarify, do so.  The experts say, “the answer is always in the passage” (I’d add to that, think synonym or ”word find”).  But, if you’re anything like me, racing the clock is a legit challenge (and I’m an avid reader) — which then lead me to the “educated guesses” department.

If you are taking more than a minute to figure out the answer, skip that question and come back.  But, be sure to circle it in your test booklet so you don’t forget to come back. I found that the answer would often clarify itself as I answered the other questions (does that make sense?!).

And, if you get back to that question, and time is running out and you still can’t figure it out, but you’ve got it down to two answers, choose the most innocuous one (i.e. the least restrictive).  i.e. Imagine that the test makers don’t want to have any problems with a definitive answer that might not be definitive.

Steer clear of confining words such as “every,” “always,” “must,” etc. —  and veer more towards words like “sometimes,” “usually,” and “often.”  And, usually passages about artists, educators, minorities are sympathetic/positive in tone — so if they ask a question about tone, consider this SAT propensity.

But, this is a strategy to be used only if you can’t find the answer in the passage, and you are down to the wire on time. It’s not foolproof, and they could do just the opposite on the very next test.  But, I’d call this an “educated guess.”

Oh, and here’s one more: When you see one of those “what does this word mean in context” questions in the Critical Reading passages section — replace the word in the passage with the words from the answer choices, one by one.

Just slot them right into the passage and see which one works.  I found this made the answer super obvious and only one word seemed to fit each time. This turns this type of question into a 5 second q instead of a 30 second one.

Ok, that’s all for now.  More FAQs tk.  Hopefully tomorrow — and in the meantime, check out the Solutions page (scroll down) for more Critical Reading advice.

llustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

I’ve spent the last few weeks gorging on books I’d set aside to read over the course of the past year.

One such book was None of the Above: Behind the Myth of Scholastic Aptitude by David Owen, which was published in 1985 — and while I can’t vouch for it’s accuracy all these years later (the SAT has morphed a few times since the book was published), I can attest to the fact that it has fully retained it’s entertainment value, and, it’s still loaded with valid SAT information.

Before I highlight some of my favorite quotes from the book, I want to qualify:

1) While much of this book falls in line with my personal SAT experience, the author’s indicting tone diverges from my own agenda. Personally, I haven’t taken the time to decide where I stand on the SAT, as it was never my priority to judge the test. My intention was to connect with my son and have a little bit of fun. (Mission accomplished, btw.)

2) My other intention was to share what we learned along the way, and hopefully spare others some test prep wheel-spinning. More to come on that front over the next few weeks.

Ok, here goes, a few of my favorite quotes (many abbreviated, which hopefully didn’t take them out of context):

This first quote is from the Introduction. I’ve said at least a zillion times, to all those who tell me how easy, or unfair the SAT is,  ”Come on in!  Get your feet wet — then let’s talk!” I’m not at all surprised by how reluctant even the most accomplished adults are, to re-take this test:

“Several years ago, Esquire asked me to call up a few dozen prominent media types and ask them to submit, all in good fun, to a special administration of the SAT.  The idea was to find out whether New York’s cultural lions were really everything they were cracked up to be … The project was a spectacular failure.  Of all the people I talked to, only one — P.J. O’Rourke, then the editor of the National Lampoon — agreed to take the test.  Everyone else was horrified.  …David Halberstam…George Plimpton…Frances Fitzgerald…Jules Feiffer … Susan Brownmiller…John Simon…Midge Decter…Wilfred Sheed…Gail Sheehy…Irving Kristol…

It’s quite astonishing, really, this fear and trembling about the SAT.  The people I called were scholars and best-selling authors and winners of the Pulitzer Prizes.  Their careers had been enviably successful by almost anyone’s definition.  And yet, they were afraid to take a short multiple-choice test whose content doesn’t stray far beyond a high-school-level vocabulary and simple arithmetic.”

One of the many amusing snippets in the book is about ETS headquarters (which incidentally, is a stone’s throw from where I grew up):

“The not-for-profit are different from you and me.  Tennis courts, a simming pool, a baseball diamond, a croquet lawn, a private hotel, 400 acres of woods and rolling hills, cavorting deer, a resident flock of Canada geese — I’m loving every minute here at the Educational Testing Service, the great untaxed, unregulated, unblinking eye of the American meritocracy.”

ETS sells the SAT scores (said boldly, on purpose).  I feel like that point bears repeating, loudly, as most parents I know don’t realize that SAT scores can result in  $$$ opportunities.  Fine if you want to blow it off because you don’t believe in “standardized testing” (trust me, I’ve had my own come to jesus moments about what it means to be good — or not — at this test) — but just be aware that you’re potentially leaving money on the table by not buying in.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not in any position to be thumbing my nose at opportunities to help pay for college, so if that means I’ve got to buy into this SAT thing, so be it.  I’m in.

I’ve seen school administrators (including those in my own town) publicly condemn the SAT without mentioning to families that rejecting the test means forfeiting financial opportunities. Just so you know…..

“ETS collects information about participants in it’s Admissions Testing Program and sells it to colleges, foundations, military recruiters, and other ‘institutions, consortia, and scholarship agencies.”

The week before my final SAT, I had this epiphany that I was going about the Critical Reading section all wrong.  I was focused on the author of the passages, while I should have been focusing on the author of the questions and answers. It seems so obvious now.

“In contrast to messy essay tests, ETS would have you believe, it’s multiple-choice questions and answers are scientifically designed and entirely above suspicion.  But the truth is that these tests are written by ordinary people who quite possibly didn’t do as well on their SATs as you did on yours.”….

….”ETS uses numbers to build its tests, but it needs people to write the items.  Understanding how these people think is one of the keys to both doing well on their tests and to penetrating the mystique in which they cloak their work.  Despite ETS’s claims of “science” and “objectivity,” the company’s tests are written by subjective human beings who tend to think in certain predictable ways.”

I wrote a  few blog posts about feeling purposely messed with by the SAT test writers, and people came down hard on me for saying that.  But, I maintain my position (and this book concurs): Watch out! They are messing with you.

“Another way to make students miss questions whose subject matter they understand is to write misleading questions.  Test-makers don’t always do this intentionally, but they always do it, in part because it’s very hard not to.”

I won’t lie, these quotes did make me feel better:

“Bright students sometimes have trouble on ETS tests, because they tend to see possibilities that the question writers missed.”…

…”Advanced students often have trouble on the SAT because they aren’t adept at recognizing the tricks ETS uses to make familiar problems look unfamiliar…. The only aptitude they need to increase in order to score higher is their aptitude for detecting the ETS mentality.”

Someone told me at the very end of my project that if you’re down to two answers in the Critical Reading section, and don’t have time to find the answer in the passage (often the case with me), pick the most innocuous choice.  This quote from the book clarifies the reasoning:

“In ETS test reviews, the emphasis is not always on whether keyed answers are good or absolutely correct but on whether they can be defended in the event that someone later complains.”

To this line, I’d say, yup.  Probably. Sounds right to me:

“Good poker players make good SAT-takers; they know how to figure out the odds and take calculated risks.”

The book contains a chapter about bad test prep that was so in line with my experience, I could have written it myself.  I call them, ”The Impostors.”

“Ineffective coaching courses tend to be so not because they are too short but because their curricula are cluttered up with “educational” materials that have little or nothing to do with the “abilities” measured by ETS.”

“Most commercial coaching materials have very little to do with either education or the SAT.  Many are written by people who clearly know very little about the tests they purport to explain.  Some probably even lower the scores of the students who use them.”

I’d highly recommend this book for all would-be test takers, parents, and tutors.  It’s an enlightening, informative, and a lot of fun to read.

llustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

December 30, 2011

If you want to read the original, pre-journey, more innocent, less knowing, and probably more magical thinking “About Page” for this website, you can check it out via this link. But, I wrote that page in a very naive state of mind (i.e. before I took all SEVEN — yes, 7) official SATs offered by the College Board over the course of 2011.

I’m a 46 year old mother of two teenagers, and this whole crazy journey started out as a cockamammie scheme to connect with my son. I thought maybe I could get him interested in this SAT thing if I climbed into the trenches. On that front, I totally scored (though he might never admit this to anyone other than me — but we definitely bonded over the experience).

Bizarrely, I find the SAT “fun,” as an adult. Go figure, especially given that I scored abysmally in high school. But, I’d always assumed that was because I didn’t try very hard, way back when (circa 1982).

Anyway, my premise, last year, before I started taking the SAT, was that with a little bit of elbow grease, I could beat this thing once and for all — and wouldn’t that be a wonderful lesson for my kids: i.e. Watch this children!  Let mom show you what you can achieve with a little hard work! (Haha, she says now, contemplating the true meaning of “a little hard work.”)

Well, it didn’t turn out the way I’d planned — at least not with the Math section, which incidentally remains my favorite of the three sections, despite my heartache over hardly improving after 10 months of joyful study. Honestly, I’m still recovering from the shock over my lack of math score improvement (not to mention the look of stun on my son’s face when I told him that his mother didn’t do it. Cringe.).

I did manage to improve my Critical Reading and Writing scores though: I got an 800 on the Writing section (once), and was in the 99th percentile for the Critical Reading section by the end of the year. So that’s good, I suppose. But of course, the neurotic part of me is still obsessing over my math score.

You can view my scores here, in this lovely graph format, which, incidentally, is another skill I learned over the course of this project (i.e. chart and graph making).

Here’s what I think, in an off-the-cuff, first impressions, barely said and done*, Monday morning quarterback kind of way:

I know way more math than I knew at the beginning of this project. Way. No question. What I learned was not reflected in my math score, and I think the reason is that I vastly underestimated the amount of “hard work” that would be required to achieve a great math score. Given that I hadn’t learned a lick of math since about the 9th grade, and I hate to even admit this, but my “hard work” calculations were probably off by a few years.  Eeeeeeek.

So, if you’re facing the SAT, learn from my experience!  It could take a lot more hard work than you might think.  I’d say, take what you imagine to be a very long time to study for the SAT (i.e six months?), and then add 40% to that amount of time.  Ok? Got it?

I probably should have added 400% to my own math improvement timeline.

The crazy thing is, I still believe I have a propensity for math (though I’m sure few of you will believe me after looking at my scores).  Not to mention, I loved the math section! They should have given me points for enthusiasm.

And the Reading and the Writing sections? I’d say that my experience shows that with a solid base of knowledge (I’m an avid reader and spent 20+ years in book publishing), great test prep can vastly improve your score. (Note that I said great test prep; not all test prep is created equal.) Without that solid base, no amount of test prep in the world will save you (refer to my math scores, and my joyful hours of studying SAT math, for proof of concept).

My other intention with this project was to share everything I discovered along the way, so that others could learn from my experience and hopefully spare themselves some of the wheel-spinning that’s inevitable when there are 700,000 different options for “SAT Test Prep” to choose from listed in the Google machine.

I will to do my very best to highlight tips, resources, books, etc. on the righthand side of this website.

Ok, enough for now. I must stop with these postings immediately, so that I can write my book about this crazy journey — and lord help me if didn’t viscerally learn the most important lesson of the year: i.e. Everything — and I mean EVERYTHING — takes way way way longer than I think it will.

Good luck if you’re taking the SAT, and Please Please Please write to me — or comment or leave me a message somewhere, because all of your stories and comments and emails and advice and feedback over the year, truly moved me. There were a few really challenging days in 2011, where I can honestly say that the messages I received were my saving grace — like little treasures.

And from me, I’ll tell you everything I know. If you can’t find what you need on this site,  email me!

Debbie

P.S. I put an asterisk by that “all said and done” line because the truth is, I’m not really “all said and done.” It’s more like, I’m on pause.

P.S.S. I posted videos about my SAT experience on YouTube, which I’ll continue to try to do in these coming months.

P.S.S. Sometimes I share links and other non-post-length stuff on Facebook that I don’t post here, so friend me up on Facebook if that’s of interest to you.

P.S.S.S. And of course, I’m on Twitter, so connect with me there if that’s where you get your information.

And alas, Google+.  You will find me there, but the sorry truth is that I haven’t given it the full embrace yet.  I’m putting it on my list 2012 to-do list: bond with Google+.  For now, I basically post links there.  C’est tout.

All of the fabulous illustrations on this site are hand painted by Jennifer Orkin Lewis