> not in the sense of being good at taking tests

The trick to doing well on the SATs is to pay attention in class.

The trick is to prepare specifically for SATs.

One would say the tests (and job interviews) should have been designed with the original intent of testing candidates AS IS, i.e. preparing specifically for such tests should have been considered as cheating... But at some point it turned into prep gymnastics, and measuring how desperate the candidates are.

▲

Maxatar 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's not how it plays out in practice. There is overwhelming evidence that students who otherwise excel academically score fairly mediocre SAT scores on their first attempt and then jump substantially after weeks of targeted practice and/or tutoring, even though they didn't learn anything new in the classroom.

If attention in class were all it took then that improvement couldn't happen. What changed was familiarity with the test, not classroom focus.

▲

WalterBright 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I guess times have changed. When I took the SAT, I did zero prep work. Nobody else I knew did prep work, either.

Paul Graham recently posted SAT advice along the form of "when you finish the test and have more time, go back over the test and check for mistakes."

I was kinda astonished at this advice, isn't it obvious? A strategy I also employed was to do the easy problems first, so I don't miss a question that would have been easy. Apparently this has to be explained to people?

I suppose prep work would be fine for the students who didn't pay attention in class.

▲

Maxatar 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, if you took your SAT among a cohort of people where none of you practiced for the SAT, then what you're saying holds true.

That's not really the case anymore. Top tier students nowadays prepare for the SAT, they don't go into it blind and haven't done so for the better part of 20 years.

	▲	WalterBright 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I didn't get a perfect score, but it was good enough to get what I wanted.

▲

s5300 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲

fsckboy 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not aware that there is any method to dramatically increase SAT scores (and neither IQ test scores). could you point me to your sources?

	▲	Maxatar 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Straight from the College Board themselves: https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/osp-technical-re... That report also references another study showing that each hour of tutoring was associated with an increase of 2.34 points on the SAT score which unfortunately is behind a paywall: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282492223_Preparing...