FiskeGuide.com

Since you’re too smart to fret and pull your hair out over a tough problem, there are two options. You can either skip it and come back, or you can guess. Our survey included many advocates of skipping. “I took practice tests and found out a target score and the number I could skip to get the score,” says a matter-of-fact student who got 700 V, 690 M. According to a 770 V, 800 M scorer, “It’s better to get all the easy questions done that you can, so you aren’t rushing through them later and making stupid mistakes.” Another student was not satisfied with her 690 V, 710 M on her first SAT. “I knew I could do better because I hadn’t managed my time very well, so I taught myself to skip hard questions. (It really does help, even though it feels wrong after taking too many tests in school where you had to answer every question.)” With the new strategy, her score jumped to 760 V and 740 M.

Despite widespread praise for skipping, there were some dissenting voices. One student who scored 610 V, 630 M writes that skipping “misleads an average student into thinking that he or she cannot do a question.” Another potential drawback: skipping means that you must read the question twice, and you may need to remind yourself of its context. This can be especially damaging in the Reading Comprehension, where students who skip are forced to reacquaint themselves with an entire passage. Says a Princeton-bound 730 V, 770 M scorer, “Too much jumping around can be discouraging and/or time-consuming rather than time-saving.” There is also the nightmare scenario of skipping a problem in the test booklet but forgetting to skip on the answer sheet.

If you do skip, watch your oval blackening with extra care.

Write some quick notes in the test booklet next to the problem if you have a thought worth remembering when you come back. If you can eliminate possible answers before moving on, leave a mark to remind yourself which ones you have eliminated.

Students should experiment with the amount of questions they skip. Between three and five is a reasonable number. If you find yourself skipping more than ten, you may need to start trying harder to get an answer before you skip, or making a few more guesses before moving on.

Students who are generally unable to finish the test—but who also get distracted by skipping—can try a modified version of this strategy. Because test questions of each type go from easy to hard (with the exception of Reading Comprehension), some students may prefer to answer every question through the first two-thirds or three-quarters of each section, and then skip around among the hard questions at the end. This strategy allows unbroken concentration at the beginning while limiting time-pressure anxiety. After completing most of the test, students can use the remaining time to decide which of the relatively hard questions at the end of the section they will answer. This method is preferable to working straight through until time runs out because it is always possible that an easy question or two—or perhaps a “hard” question to which you happen to know the answer—will be lurking near the end.

In lieu of skipping, your second alternative for a stumper question is to guess. Which option is best? It depends on the question. If your gut feeling is that more thought will give you a chance to solve the problem, skip it. If you size it up and conclude that more thinking is not going to help, make a guess and move on. As you take your practice tests, ask yourself: Do you often skip a problem and then come back to it, only to make a guess because you still can’t figure it out? If so, you would have been better off to guess the first time and put the question out of your mind.

One thing you should never do is leave a question blank. On the multiple-choice questions that form the majority of the test, ETS awards one point for each question you get right and subtracts one-quarter of a point for every one you get wrong. That means that if you randomly guess at five, the odds are that you will get one right and miss four—with no affect on your score. The idea is to ensure that on average, random guessing will neither hurt nor help you. But guesses on the SAT are rarely random. In most cases, you can eliminate at least one bonehead response. On questions where you have any clue, no matter how faint, a guess is better than no answer.

To gauge the effectiveness of your guessing, we recommend that you monitor how many of your guesses are right and wrong when you take your practice tests. You can do so by making a mark beside each response that is a guess, then checking to see if you got them right. “Taking timed practice tests and making educated guesses sort of go hand-in-hand,” says a student who scored 730 V, 800 M, “By taking mock SATs, I was able to get used to the answers that the test-makers were looking for, and was thus able to reason out answers on the actual test.” Another student who scored 800 V, 730 M says that practice tests “help you find out how good of an ‘educated guesser’ you are so you’ll know how much to trust that skill.”

Source: The Fiske Guide to Getting Into the Right College.

A majority of the students in our survey who paid for SAT coaching said that the idea came from mom and dad. That’s understandable—parents are the ones who pay the bill. But our questionnaires found numerous instances when over-stressed parents crammed a cram course down the throat of an unwilling student. One my-mom-made-me-do-it prepper describes his course as “a waste of time and money,” adding that “what helped was sitting down by myself and becoming comfortable with the format.” He scored 700 V and 730 M.

Another student says his math tutoring was “worthless” and that he reacted negatively “because it was not my choice.” His scores were 760 V, 690 M and he advises students to take practice tests and prepare on their own. Yet another student was prodded by his parents to get tutoring in math after he scored “only” 640 the first time. “It was boring and I wasn’t told anything I didn’t already know. I’m just glad my parents paid for it, not me,” he tells us. And his math score the second time? 640 again. Asked about the benefits of her prep course, another student who scored 520 V and 630 M replied: “It pleased my parents.” Were the benefits worth the cost? “NO!”

Source: Fiske Nailing the New SAT.

Many people assume that an adult standing in the front of the room, with students listening attentively, will automatically raise scores. But studies among college students have shown that those who listen to a lecture learn no more than those who get a transcript of what was said. That bodes ill for national test prep companies because many instructors are recent college graduates who rely heavily on company books. “What was taught in the classroom was the exact same thing printed in the Kaplan book I bought from the bookstore,” complains a 740 V, 690 M scorer. Another student who prepped at a local firm and scored 610 V, 690 M writes, “It seemed that the instructors became talking books. Everything they told us I had already read…. The instructors often didn’t know the answers to questions outside our homework.”

Despite the subjectivity involved, we wanted to know about students’ perceptions of whether coaching increased their scores. The survey gave students a choice of five responses to how much they thought their composite score increased: None; 50 points or less; 60–100 points; 110–150 points; or 160+ points. The most common response was 60–100 points, followed by 50 points or less. Together, these two responses formed a solid majority across all score intervals and all test prep companies. Lesser and approximately equal numbers of students believed that their score went up not at all, or 110–150 points, and a smaller fraction believed that its scores had gone up 160 points or more. There was only one systematic difference in the responses. Those who scored lower than 1100 were less likely to believe that their score had jumped more than 100 points.

Of the students who thought that their prep course was worthwhile, few cited test-taking strategies or the insight of the instructor as the reason why it was useful. The most commonly cited benefit was access to practice tests; a close second was having someone on the scene to make sure they got done. “The course itself did not provide many helpful hints but did force me to take practice tests,” says a 600 V, 600 M scorer. “My tutor made me do the work on the tests,” admits another student who scored 690 V, 710 M. “If he hadn’t forced me to do it, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

Many students tended to be forgiving when coaching courses failed to deliver the promised score increases. “I learned a lot of great strategies but did not improve my score by the 100 points that were guaranteed,” said a 650 V, 550 M Princeton Review student of her prep course. “I would still recommend it to other students because I know that it can be very helpful for many students.”

“I only increased 10 points,” wrote a 540 V, 560 M Princeton Review prepper who elsewhere noted, “I would recommend this course. It was very helpful learning the tips on how to take the SATs.” Another Princeton Review student with a combined score of 550 V, 630 M had an interesting hypothesis about score increases: “Each time I took a practice test my score improved. I think the tests they gave got easier, because my real SAT score was a lot lower than my final practice score.” One 640 V, 590 M scorer was perturbed by what she perceived as Princeton Review’s lack of follow-through. “Princeton Review did not keep its word about private tutoring if I didn’t go up 100 points from my first practice test. I had to find a tutor on my own.” (Princeton Review’s guarantee for private tutoring is the same as for its classroom courses.)

Source: Fiske Nailing the New SAT.

Two decades ago a small number of U.S. colleges and universities, including Bates and Bowdoin, decided that they would no longer require all applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. They reasoned that there is a significant pool of bright students who can do quality academic work but who for one reason or another do not test well. A “test optional” policy would allow them to tap into this market.

Over the years the number of “test optional” schools has grown dramatically. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest), a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based advocacy organization that is critical of standardized testing in general, has tracked this growth, and at press time its website (www.fairtest.org) listed 755 such colleges and universities. Reasons for this growing aversion to college admissions tests are many. The early test optional schools have been happy with the way the policy has worked out. The SAT has been a focus of repeated controversy, especially around incidents of scoring error. And perhaps most importantly, the whole field of “test prep” has spiraled out of control. Students and parents alike are tired of the anxiety surrounding prep courses—not to mention the financial cost of helping bolster the coffers of Kaplan or Princeton Review.

Until recently there was not much that students could do—especially if they hoped to be able to choose among a range of quality colleges. Over the last two or three years, however, a critical mass has emerged of quality liberal arts colleges and major state universities that are “test optional.” There are now 50 such institutions covered in the Fiske Guide. For the first time, students who wish to avoid getting involved in the admissions test rat race can do so but while still enjoying a range of colleges and universities from which to choose.

Accordingly, we have decided to begin publishing a list of those colleges and universities in the Guide that are “test optional.” We are not recommending that any particular student eschew college admissions tests and apply only to these schools. As a resource designed to help students and parents, we are simply pointing out that applicants now have that option.

In looking over the list below of “test optional” colleges and universities described in the Fiske Guide to Colleges 2011, please keep a couple of things in mind. First, most of them are large state universities or small liberal arts colleges. You won’t find many other types, including the Ivies or flagship publics. Second, keep in mind that there are different ways of being “test optional.” Some schools, for example, only exempt students who meet certain GPA or class rank criteria. Qualifications are noted in the footnotes. Finally, the test optional field is changing daily, so go to www.fairtest.org for updated information and, above all, confirm current policy with any school to which you are thinking of applying.

Source: Fiske Guide to Colleges 2011.