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Lowest Raw Score Ever on the SAT
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..."
Give me a break, people -- standardized tests measure *something* well, but we're not sure what.
Any person or college who takes SAT scores seriously should definitely reconsider their ranking algorithms.
Repeat after me -- the SAT is a conspiracy.
more people do this,the percentile score of the real test takers will increase.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Its the Scotty syndrome: It will take a long time, I dont know enough about it! I will try hard to get it done in a week. Then you get it done in 3 days, and everyone loves you. Look stupid, be smart.
Personally, for my choice as president, I'll rather have a man with an IQ of 129 that has excellent intrapersonal/leadership skills and the abillity (and humillity) to suround himself with advisors smarter than him over an egotistical "I'll do it all myself" type with an IQ of 180.
I did my undergraduate education in India, where we didn't have the SAT -- but I did take the GRE for graduate study in the USA, and I understand the format of the GRE is like that of the SAT, just harder and with a extra "analytic" section.
The SAT verbal section is for the most part, a test of vocabulary word memorization. In India, we aspiring graduate students spent marathon sessions memorizing vocabulary words that we never used again after taking the test. It was quite a joke, really. It favors those with the wherewithal to engage in this mindless brain-stuffing, and disadvantages those who do have the skills to read critically and find meaning, but don't memorize all those esoteric (= a good example itself!) words.
While the math section seems relevant, the verbal section needs much overhaul to not rely so much on pure memorization.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Totally off topic, but your sig caught my attention:
Abolish the UK TV licence fee!
Erm, why? The BBC is one of the best damn things about the UK. And you want to sacrifice it just to save a few quid.
"Television companies are not in the business of delivering television programs to their audience, they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers. This is why the BBC has such a schizophrenic time - it's actually in a different business from all its competitors." - Douglas Adams
Sadly, one of the defining characteristics of such a person would be that they would not be egotistical enough to enter a nation-wide popularity contest. I generally regard anyone who chooses to stand for election to be unelectable on those grounds. This makes voting difficult.
The only exception to this I have seen was an independent candidate who stood in the UK elections a few years back. The incumbent had been accused of corruption, and the independent stated that he would run against him, but would not run against another candidate that the Conservative party selected. They didn't back down, and the independent candidate won.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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!
The top 2% is one person if 50. It's not a tiny number of people.
Interesting to note that the top 2% of the population includes people who chose names like "Motherfucking Shit."
Rather than have a spare half hour at the end, I usually take regular 5 minute breaks during the exam and let my mind wander (this also improves my score, since it reduces stress, which inhibits brain function). During this time, my brain is highly active due to the exam, but unfocussed due to the break, and so generates a large number of random thoughts, many of which are entertaining.
Some more exam hints:
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Young SAT takers...the only advice I have to give concerning this test is take it over and over and over and over. Dot it so much that you memorize the spoken instructions. Take the PSATs as often as you can. Then take the SAT as often as your budget will let you.
I went to a magnet high school that seemed to be little more than a college-entry factory and we prepped for the SAT from the first day of my freshman year. The more familiar you become with it, the better you'll be at it.
Also, from what I understand, your score is variable on how everyone else did as well (kind of like a curve in a class of many thousands). So depending on when you take it, your score could go up. My 4 PSAT/SAT scores were: 1240, 1260, 1340, 1420. Screw people who say you can't jump up like that - just keep taking the thing and you have a good chance of at least marginally increasing your score.
Oh, and get there on time too. Flying around town at 90mph to go back and get your ticket was^H^H^His not fun.
The GI bill ruined any chance we had at getting an honest-to-god "University" on our blessid soil.
:)
Sorry, guess I'm a little lost here, but what does the GI bill have to do with a quality of eduacation and the traditional "University" system. Stupid GI's lowering the bar or did the government make some deal with the colleges to let GI's pass the system?
I'll agree that schools have changed, and perhaps our recient graduates are missing some of the finer things in an education, but I do fail to see where that is linked to the GI Bill. Really not trying to troll here, but rather asking for something to back up your statement.
Oh look, it's light outside, I think that means I can go home from work
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
As proof I submit that if I were to grade my answer to this question, I would give myself full credit.
Actually that argument probably fails. I think there will probably be precise and detailed list of criteria for scoring the essay. Yes, it will be partially subjective, but not entirely arbitrary. Giving yourself full credit for that essay would probably be a violation of the rules.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Ok, I hear you, but consider for a second - the alternative to a TV license is commercial funding. We have an abundance of commercial channels on digital transmission now. Is it really desirable that every media stream should be commercially funded? Is there not still a place channels whose content does not depend on attracting mainstream advertisers?
Dave
Actually, the marking of essays is a problem that's been pretty comprehensively solved here in sunny Queensland Australia. The trick to it is to have a statistician on hand. Then you take a whole bunch of markers from all around the state and they come together to mark the essays. You give them a whole bunch of training on how to mark the essays, what they should be looking for etc. Each essay is then independently marked twice (ie: two markers read and grade it without knowing anything about what the other marker thought of the paper). Then the results are collated and handed to the statistician who looks for any grades that don't match up - one of the markers isn't marking properly. Which one is easy to pick because during the day each marker will have marked several essays and the pairs of markers always change, so you just look for any marker that shows up in more than one grade mismatch and you have your problem case.
Once you've found the problem cases for the day you prioritise them and take out the most significant problem markers for more training (there's not enough money to retrain them all). If a marker is picked up as a problem case twice they're sent home and won't participate in any further marking (usually for quite a few years, teachers around here have long memories...).
So now we have a system that keeps markers consistent, what do you do with the grades that were mismatched by markers? You have the essay graded by a third person who is very experienced in the marking process and see what they think. If they have trouble deciding they can refer it to a fourth person and so on.
So in short, the way to mark essays reliably and fairly, lots of training, lots of money, and a damn good statistician (yes only one statistician for the entire state of Queensland).
Also note that the test we use (the Queensland Core Skills test or QCS) is regarded as one of the best tests in the world, takes about 2 years to write (they're already working on the 2005 test) and is sold off to other countries like Japan. You should also note that your mark on the QCS test does not affect your tertiary entrace score, rather the results of the QCS test are groups in various ways and use to scale your marks for the rest of your senior year to accomodate for different difficulties of subjects (Physics vs Chemistry vs English vs Art vs Typing etc) as well as differences in marking between schools and a whole host of other things, but never an individual basis. In other words, it takes probability into account which suggests that some students will perform below their normal standard and others will perform above their normal standard since the test is held over only two days (a small sample of the students actual work thus leading to high variance).
The whole process is actually very carefully and very well designed so you're of the belief that tests don't judge personal ability, you should do some research on this process because it's as good an example of test usage you're likely to find. The biggest downside is that because of it's complexity (or particuarly because it's different to the normal way people think about tests) most students don't actually understand the process and really panic about their QCS test results.
Simple, you do the right work.
For example when you have a 5 point essay question, don't write a book. Write a paragraph, with 5 points in it. If the teacher is a biggie for structure, add an intro and summary sentence. Make sure you spell it mostly right, and write neatly.
Also don't make run on sentences.
When you do projects, make them the appropriate size for the mark value and your position. Then make sure it is done well. Target the requirements.
If the teacher/prof/TA wants a 10 page report, doing a good 10 page report will get you a higher mark then an even better 20 page report.
Last time I had an IQ test (in the twightlight of my HS years), I believe I fell within the top .1% of the population. (I can really be an ass and say
that the score was probably a tad lower then what my real IQ was at the time -
since I went for speed in taking the test.)
So, I'm a smart person. Yah! A very super-duper intelligent person. Am I doing better in life because of it? Nope.
Intelligence does influence how successful you'll be in life, but it is not the only factor. Social skills (which I'm lacking), confidence (lacking again), and an extroverted nature also plays a huge factor in your success in life.
I'm currently sitting back at a crappy job, watching the world go by at the age of 24, while I try to figure what the hell I want. My former classmates, some with more drive then me, are probably pulling down 5x what I make in a year.
Intelligence is overrated...
I got mid 170s in an IQ test that the school/state put me in for - at the time I didn't even know I was doing an IQ test. I was just doing fun and fairly easy spatial and verbal puzzles for an afternoon - some part of which was talking to an entertaining and interesting person (an educational psychologist).
If I had realised the implications of what I was doing I would have flunked it. Twenty-two years later I can look back at a lot of bad-times and finger that test as a cause.
It is usually best that most people do not think of you as belonging to a privileged group.
Schools are awful - merely open prisons for children, ways of keeping them of the streets while their parents work society's treadmills, while preparing them for the same life of indentured servitude. :-)
Read some Ivan Illich . He frames his arguments better than I do.
"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question." Ivan Illich Deschooling Society (1973)
I'm upset because I went through twelve years of school and never learned:
1. Office/Workplace Etiquette.
2. Customer Service Skills.
3. How Banking Works.
4. How to build Good Credit.
5. How to PAY A BILL.
6. Landlord/tenant rights.
7. How a car works (basic theory).
8. How to budget monthly.
9. How Insurance works/how to use insurance.
10.So much more.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
You have a seriously distorted view of what commitment is. I would say commitment very much includes "ability to get up in the morning, follow a set schedule, do what they're told." Just showing you can do the work when You want to does not show you are committed to anything. It just shows you are a stuck-up snob who thinks they are too smart to bother with the little things; no wonder you got a C.