SAT Scores Fall as More Students Take the Test

Re:SAT Scores Fall as More Students Take the Test by disjhshava on Thursday September 26, 2019 @05:25PM (#21085713)

My story matches yours almost exactly. Didn't take a class, did a bunch of practice tests, got an almost perfect score.

I agree that confidence is very important, and aptitude matters too (otherwise everyone who took a class would get a 2400).

Commonly-given wrong advice is about guessing. You should never leave a question blank. Prior to 2016, guessing had an EV of 0, so if you had any hint that any of the answers are better or worse than chance, you should guess. I heard advice like "only guess if you can eliminate two answers", which is clearly wrong.

Now they got rid of the penalty for wrong answers, so guessing has positive EV even if you have no information at all.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:SAT Scores Fall as More Students Take the Test by IMAYousaf on Thursday September 26, 2019 @05:29PM (#21085752)

I believe that the EV just changed recently though right? Because when I took the SAT, there was an incorrect answer penalty that now doesn't exist.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:SAT Scores Fall as More Students Take the Test by disjhshava on Thursday September 26, 2019 @05:37PM (#21085825)

I ninja-edited my post. Previously the EV for uniform guessing was zero, because the points value for all the answers (1, -.25, -.25, -.25, -.25) summed to 0. Now the EV is positive because they got rid of the -.25 penalty.

To make things more complicated: if you were gunning for a high score in the old system, it was even more important to guess, because your partial points could get rounded up.

[ Parent | on HN ]