{"items": [{"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687586938142", "anchor": "fb-687586938142", "service": "fb", "text": "I think it also depends on what \"test prep\" means. If it means (a) teaching the tricks and mechanics and strategies of a test, that's a different method than (b) teaching the underlying content and helping students understand it better.
I say this not to be overly picky, but to point out that the test prep books I've read focus universally on (a). The tutors I know focus on (a) and (b), or sometimes just on (b).
Different methods might be the cause of different results here.
(full disclosure: my life partner owns a tutoring business that has a small number of \"test prep\" clients in among the general-content ones.)", "timestamp": "1410382300"}, {"author": "Adam", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687587087842", "anchor": "fb-687587087842", "service": "fb", "text": "Likely both. Most firms are a way of conning middle-income people out of their money. But a few (very expensive) firms do work very effectively.", "timestamp": "1410382447"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687587896222", "anchor": "fb-687587896222", "service": "fb", "text": "Minimum score? You want to intentionally bomb it? Does that require answering incorrectly, as opposed to just not answering? If so, that sounds kind of fun, though probably not fun enough to justify the money and the time.", "timestamp": "1410382964"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687587991032", "anchor": "fb-687587991032", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff just wants to play a variant of Mis\u00e8re SAT.", "timestamp": "1410383012"}, {"author": "Rob", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687588455102", "anchor": "fb-687588455102", "service": "fb", "text": "\"I'm kind of tempted to sign up to take it to see if I can get the minimum score.\"
You would be my hero! <3", "timestamp": "1410383416"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687588465082", "anchor": "fb-687588465082", "service": "fb", "text": "Incidentally, my score went up 240 points (out of 1600) between the two times I took it, with no test-specific prep in between. Granted, those two times were in middle school and then junior year, so that might seem irrelevant to the idea of \"scores go up over time\". However, I'd argue it's not. Presumably those gains didn't all come from, say, 8th grade through sophomore year, and then completely plateau.", "timestamp": "1410383422"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1410383877"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1410384288"}, {"author": "Jillian", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687590026952", "anchor": "fb-687590026952", "service": "fb", "text": "Todd-- My SAT score likewise went up 250 points over 4 years (7th-11th), but I took it annually over those 4 years. The increments were 30, 140, 50, 30. I'm guessing some actual learning (or other brain development) occurred during at least one of those intervals; the rest could easily just be practice.", "timestamp": "1410384677"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687592372252", "anchor": "fb-687592372252", "service": "fb", "text": "@Elliot: My friends are former SAT tutors, so they don't have too much riding on it. Though they may well have formed their opinions of its efficacy back when they were still getting paid for it.", "timestamp": "1410386275"}, {"author": "Topher", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687594358272", "anchor": "fb-687594358272", "service": "fb", "text": "As someone who scores very highly on standardized tests, and paid money for test prep, I have the boring opinion that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
(1) Standardized tests are fairly reliable instruments that are hard to influence by spending money. There is scientific research to back this up. Anecdotally I score very highly on standardized tests without any prep, and have a correspondingly easy time in academic classes designed for normal people.
(2) Test prep still helps a little. Practicing anything always helps, so taking practice tests helps. Taking real tests from past years probably helps more than taking fake ones made by test prep companies. (Indeed, I've wondered if test prep companies intentionally make their practice tests artificially hard, to create the illusion that the practice tests help more than they actually do.)
(3) I personally have found tricks designed to game the tests useless if not actively harmful. But that may be because the tricks are designed for the average test taker, which I am not.", "timestamp": "1410387561"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687596094792", "anchor": "fb-687596094792", "service": "fb", "text": "@Todd: \"Does that require answering incorrectly, as opposed to just not answering?\"
To get the minimum raw score you need to answer every question incorrectly, but when the SAT switches to \"rights-only\" scoring this will just require leaving every question blank (much less interesting). Then there's the conversion from raw score to reported score. At least in 2011 [1] a raw score of 0 (blank test) was not enough to score a 200, you had to get at least some questions wrong. The minimum possible raw score is -0.25/question or -16.75 for verbal and -13.5 for math. You just need to get -5 to definitely get a 200.
If I could find my raw score out afterwards I'd be more interested in trying for misere SAT.
[1] http://media.collegeboard.com/.../SAT-RAW-Score-Scaled...", "timestamp": "1410388468"}, {"author": "Topher", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687611893132", "anchor": "fb-687611893132", "service": "fb", "text": "Oh, also:
(4) Standardized tests that include tests of vocabulary (often in the guise of \"analogies\") are awful and easily gamed through rote memorization.", "timestamp": "1410397726"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687612142632", "anchor": "fb-687612142632", "service": "fb", "text": "@Topher: \"Standardized tests that include tests of vocabulary (often in the guise of \"analogies\") are awful and easily gamed through rote memorization.\"
If that were the case, then wouldn't the research (which was on the old analogy-including SAT) show significant prep-gainst for the verbal section? Not only were the observed gains consistently small, they were also mostly for the math section.", "timestamp": "1410397871"}, {"author": "Topher", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687612432052", "anchor": "fb-687612432052", "service": "fb", "text": "Well, it's not like vocab is the entire verbal section. (Or any of it, anymore? I heard something about analogies getting removed for exactly this reason.)
I dunno. I feel like I benefitted massively from vocab flashcards on my GRE. I had a perfect math and verbal GRE. Without test prep, I think it's likely I would have still gotten a near-perfect math score, but my verbal score would have been strong while being nowhere near perfect. But maybe I'm wrong about this.", "timestamp": "1410398097"}, {"author": "Ames", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/687585655712?comment_id=687632342152", "anchor": "fb-687632342152", "service": "fb", "text": "In case this discussion warrants any more anecdotes, here's my experience: I went to a school that had no standardized testing, so the PSAT was the only other standardized test I'd taken. I was pretty comfortable with the actual content (math, vocabulary, etc), but the format, language, and grading were new to me. The writing section in particular has a very specific grading rubric, and there's a formulaic way to make that happy. I took an SAT prep class at a local community college, took the test once, and got pretty decent scores.", "timestamp": "1410406646"}]}