Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars. I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point. Perhaps if you had state sponsored test prep like in China (you spend the last two years of high school just prepping for the test), but high school isn’t compulsory and many poor kids don’t even attend.
> Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars
And that makes them perfect for poor kids who don't have much time or money, they can easily get similar levels of test prep as rich kid with little effort. GPA or extracurriculars however, no chance, those are much more dependent on home environment and wealth.
Yeah exactly. Being able to score well on some standardized test is way easier than being able to keep up performance year round when you have problems at home if you have the aptitude to succeed at either.
GPA is also much more subject to getting penalized because a teacher straight up hates you for being poor, disabled, male (this one is measurable by having teachers grade tests with different names), ugly, smelly, other thing K-12 teachers tend to dock you for even though on paper they shouldn’t.
Many extracurriculars are also expensive and poor kids don’t get to do a lot of them or excel at them to the same degree.
People are so oblivious to how judgy and twisted a solid chunk of teachers are. Obviously not the majority, but it only takes a few to really screw things up for people without enough of a support system.
Agreed except the easily part. You need to even know that you can prep, and have some clue about prepping, along with quiet places at home or a library you can get to to do the work. Let's not make a lot of assumptions here.
The only exception I can think of are the temporarily poor; e.g. refugees from Southeast Asia or Africa whose families were well to do back home and still have that familial knowledge even if they are currently lacking in money.
You don't see why studying 20 hours for 1 test that you can easily repeat is easier to scrape together than 2000 hours to score well on all tests throughout high school?
The SAT and ACT are pretty easy in this regard. You can do really good at it just by practicing for a few months. Nothing like the Chinese Gaokao, which you need to study for a couple of years at least.
SAT stands for aptitude test, why would an aptitude test require multi-hundred hours of studying? All you need is to know a bit of math and how to read and you can score really well, you'd think that would be a shit test but apparently 90% of people can neither read well nor do a bit of math, so it is actually a good test.
The SAT stopped being called an Aptitude test in 1994, when they decided it didn't mean anything except "correlated to score on other SAT sessions, and to college GPA"
If you can't find the time to do your normal tests for GPA, you won't find time to study for the SAT either. Whether that's because you live in an unsupportive home or you just can't find the discipline, it's only theoretical that someone who isn't used to a studying environment can somehow have the foresight to invest their few hours on this particular exam.
> If you can't find the time to do your normal tests for GPA, you won't find time to study for the SAT either.
That is just nonsense. Lets say that you have 20 hours to study per year, like a couple of weekends that are calmer etc, you can spend those on SAT and you got basically the full benefits of studying for that test since studying more isn't very beneficial. But 20 hours to study per year wont budge your GPA much at all. Close to every kid can find 20 hours to study per year, I'm pretty sure.
Or do you think that people can either study all the time, or study none of the time, no in-between at all?
Edit:
> it's only theoretical that someone who isn't used to a studying environment can somehow have the foresight to invest their few hours on this particular exam.
Not at all, I never studied for anything in high school and got shit grades. But I spent a weekend to study for a SAT once, got good on that, and got into college that way. This isn't theoretical at all, it happens all the time. It is very different to do something for a very short time, or keeping that up for 4 years straight.
Have you ever met kids who aren't good at studying? Do you think they somehow get their shit together just for this one test, because they read somewhere that it's judged fairly and a great investment of time? Teenagers will somehow know that 20 hours, that's where Jensson's return curve breaks?
People who study a lot study a lot for the SAT, people who study little study little for the SAT, and in between people do an in between amount of SAT. That somehow seems like a good starting point, which we'll probably be stuck on given evidence will be hard to come by.
FWIW there were kids in my kid's class who had three tutors and studied every day over the summer holiday (the test is right after). They would have stopped if it was so obvious the benefits stop past some level. Just as there will be people who think it's a great idea to put 1000 hours into it, there's going to be people who think they'll just show up on the day and see how it goes.
Edit: seems this wasn't a direct descendent of the the thread I thought it was, about the UK 11+, but the point is the same.
> Have you ever met kids who aren't good at studying? Do you think they somehow get their shit together just for this one test, because they read somewhere that it's judged fairly and a great investment of time? Teenagers will somehow know that 20 hours, that's where Jensson's return curve breaks?
I was one of those kids. I never had a stable home, I have 5 siblings with many parents, I moved between different parents, lived on the floor with mom and siblings at one of her friends homes for a few months etc. But mustering up the energy to put in effort for one test is still possible, doing that for everything, no way.
Kids aren't stupid, they have spent years doing things, reading things, it isn't hard to find out information about college, SAT etc. A bad home doesn't mean you are stupid even though you make it sound like it does.
Yes, but do you think that's what normally happens? I would suggest that what normally happens in your situation is that no studying gets done and you bomb the test.
I also know people who've been in your situation, and that's what I see more often than not.
I can understand if you think that's what the SATs are for though, a kind of lifeline for kids in bad situations. I just have reservations about it actually working enough of the time to not simply be another opportunity hoarding play by wealthier people.
I don't get you here, poor people are in much greater need of lifelines than rich people, removing the lifeline from poor people just because rich people also use it is just horrible.
The main effect of removing it is that disenfranchised smart kids don't get into college, replaced by dumb kids with stable homes who spent a ton of time studying yet were too dumb to score well on SAT. Colleges are already full of such kids, and so is the job market, we don't need more of them.
GPA is not a bunch of tests. Schools make it so box checkers who squeak get every opportunity to make up for their ability with cooperative socialization. While other students who don't do the right stuff and aren't involved in the right extracurriculars get everything rounded down, and rounded down harder if they speak up.
GPA and extracurriculars are so much easier to game than standardized tests, it's not even close. Moreover, this is what all the research on the topic suggests.
Cram schools exist for a reason. You can get lots of help on the ACT/SATs, heck, they even offer it in China.
Grades and extra circular can be gamed as well, but you have to do a lot more planning ahead of time...like you can't just start 6 months before a test date and maybe try again 6 months after that. You have to start form late elementary school and be consistent up until 12th grade.
>I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point.
When I read what you said and thought the same thing. I then looked up what the author wrote:
Rich kids who “don’t test well.”
He's just saying if you have a kid that doesn't test well (I am one of those) and happen to be wealthy, the rich have options that poor kids don't. He isn't saying rich kids don't tend to test well.
I'm not sure that premise is 100% accurate either. My parents were teachers and we didn't have extravagant lives, but my parents knew the value of an education and forced me to do test prep 6 days a week the summer after my Junior year. I ended up improving my scores and getting into a good state university and subsequently have a good career 25+ years and still going strong.
I think edge case success (students that don't test well) boils down more to parents giving a shit than anything else. It's not easy, that's for sure, even if you are moderately wealthy.
Usually things are designed so that these kids can still get A's if their tests are all B's, B's if tests are all C's, and so forth. Often with some special extra credit offered just to makes sure they can always get at least a B.
What? I think you have the wrong kind of standardized test in mind. Bad standardized tests written by politicians are easy to prepare for. Often by design, since they are supposed to measure "what you have learned", rather than how smart you are.
> Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars.
Based on comments so far, I'm curious what you mean by this. My own take is that you are correct because standardized tests are 'easier to prep for' because, in many ways, they are IQ tests that you can't prep for, or rather that Bang for the Buck of prepping is low. So, poor, smart kids with no prep can take the test hung over and do well, as the author says. Rich folks can get tutors to spend tens or hundreds of hours prepping, and have only a modest impact on their score.
SAT prep tests do have some impact, but much more significantly, re-takes and disability accommodations are highly impactful and heavily SES-correlated.
There's a lot of evidence that it's difficult to drastically change someone's test scores in a year or two, and it's compounded by the degree of internal motivation of the test taker. And there's an element of reversion to the mean with children of some high achievers.
Meanwhile, GPA and extracurriculars are significantly reflections of socialization and parents rather than anyone's inherent or learned abilities.
