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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..."
Is 1250 really a top 2%? There's something really disturbing about that...
(That's only about 2.5\sigma from the mean...)
Taral
WARN_(accel)("msg null; should hang here to be win compatible\n");
-- WINE source code
I would like to see what the real, honestly trying, low score is. I bet that nobody has all that low of a score...
George W. Bush got a verbal score of 566 and a math score of 640, for a combined score of 1206. According to this site, this means he has an IQ of approximately 129. This places him in the 97th percentile, assuming a normal gaussian distribution with mean 100 standard deviation of 15, or the 96th percentile, assuming a standard deviation of 16.
Scoring well on the SAT, or any other standardized test does little more than to prove that you can do well on standardized tests.
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.
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?
My guess is he got two "right" because those questions got thrown out and therefore everyone was marked correct on them.
On standardized testing being a joke: According to the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System for those of you outside of the state, a test that aims to determine graduation eligibility and falls...short.) I'm supposed to be *barely* average in math and below standard in english. SAT I Verbal : 800 (99%) SAT I Math : 790 (99%) SAT II Lit. : 770 (97%) SAT II Math IIC: 760 (81%) SAT II Math IC : 730 (93%) Currently, a rather frightening percentage of Mass. high school students are being denied their diplomas because of MCAS scores...and I picked up a total of some $100,000 per year in academic scholarships from six different colleges...and I'm currently getting $26,000/year from the one I chose to attend. The class one year before me had to pass the MCAS in order to graduate. Were it not for that one year...I might still be a high school senior. Standardized tests are a joke...and aren't really that funny.
Does anyone else find the idea of essay questions on the SAT at least, idiotic?
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...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think the thing that pisses me off the most is the amount of preparation people can do for the tests. I mean, if these tests are supposed to measure (whatever they think it measures).. is it really that accurate when taking a Kaplan course guarantees to improve your score by 300 points? (I'm making up numbers, sorry, but you get the point) So far, I've seen it good for 3 things.
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.
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:
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.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Another role the SATs fulfil goes beyond an aptitude test. Yes, for the most people that's what it does - measures as best it can scholastic aptitude, for better or worse. But it's also just one more hurdle in the path to college. If you think you're better than the test then you obviously don't HAVE to take it. But myself and many of my friends who thought that the test wasn't worth our time took it anyway. Why? Because if we didn't, then we limited ourselves in terms of a college education. Sure, we could have gone to a local community college instead and transfered - but even most State Universities offer higher quality education that community colleges.
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.
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, 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 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.
More than mere navel gazing.
I worked with this guy last year. He liked to work on all the tangential problems on our project... things like how to integrate Samba protocol with our proprietary API... fun stuff with actual real results...
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...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I don't want to piss in anyone's cornflakes, but I know someone who I went to HS with who scored around 400 (I don't remember exactly what, but I know it wasn't over 500) in 1983.
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.
WTF? Over?
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, 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.
I'd love to know what schools have sent him a prospectus on attending. Who are the bottom feeders?
> Now granted, in order to get into a good (medical school), you still have to go through a nasty little M-CAT, something I know nothing about.
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.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
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.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I took the SAT in 1968 or 1969. You had to pay for tests in groups of three, there were 5 I wanted, so I threw in Math II just to get my money's worth. There were a bunch of questions I didn't answer, and one I took a wild guess at but remember very well. I asked my math teacher about it the next day, he showed me how to figure it out, and I had guessed wrong. Months later, I was called in to the counselor's office, I had gotten 800 (perfect) on Math II. I laughed and told him no way, he said way, I told him why, he asked them to double check, some time later they called me back in, said hand scoring had confirmed it.
:-)
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
Infuriate left and right
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.
I studied Philosophy at Cambridge University, and the last exam you took every year was called "Essay". You were expected to pontificate for three hours on one of a number of topics. So, the question paper would be:
...
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...
--- My dad's political betting
Surely you can just keep sending them on their way when they turn up at your door. Just keep on refusing them entrance (they do need a warrant without your express permission).
:)
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
If nature abhors a vacuum, why isn't there more dust in the world?
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!