Oh phooey. I never prepared for the SATs, and nobody I knew did, either. (Back in the 70s.)
Wanna know how to do well on the SATs? Pay attention in school to readin, ritin, and rithmetic.
As for SAT prep books, I see them all the time in the thrift store for a couple bucks. The notion that only the wealthy have access to them is nonsense.
I have no idea if the relative quality of today's Caltech freshman body is better or the same as in my day.
I flipped through an SAT vocabulary builder book the other day. I knew nearly all the words in it already. Vocabulary is something that happens organically, by reading a lot and looking into complex things. I suspect that memorizing word lists builds a fake vocabulary. Some people have told me they recognize when someone sprinkles their language with the daily word they memorized. It comes off as pretension, not education.
I suspect that if SAT training involves learning fake knowledge and test taking tricks, anyone who gets into Caltech via that method is going to find they're in the wrong place. Students there like to sit in the halls and talk about ways to build a warp drive. Students who don't belong will be watching the game on TV.
One of my good friends there had an apartment off campus. He'd regularly make his special chicken wings and invite all comers (this was not to be missed). The apartment manager would come, too, and he'd just quietly sit off in a corner by himself, munching on chicken wings.
I asked him once why he was there - he didn't participate, and he was way way older. He replied, "oh, this is incredibly fun. I've never ever heard people talk like this before. I just like to listen."
And also - I agree - I never really learned “grammar rules” or the details of writing. I just learned from listening, talking, and reading many many books in elementary and middle school. To prepare for a test by memorizing vocab seems inherently the wrong approach.
I read a great deal as a kid, too. Mostly scifi :-)
I made the mistake of attempting to learn German by memorizing. But who can remember which nouns go with der, die, or das? Not me. I bet the right way is to simply read the newspaper every day, looking up the words one doesn't know, one by one.
I heard something on This American Life, I think, about a "strong student" from a bad high school doing poorly on the SAT. I got the impression she hadn't prepared at all...which seems odd for a strong student when there are free resources.
> memorizing vocab
The College Board got called out for some of this after the "regatta" incident. It turns out rich kids were much more likely to know the term for a boat race. Oops.
I'm really curious to see the outcomes of the no-SAT cohort of college students, once the 2020-2021 year is ignored, data cleaned, etc. Even if GPA was enough in 2020, it seems like it would get harder and harder to compare schools over time without a standardized test.
I was just a kid. I didn't hang out in bars. I had no idea what the contents of a martini were.
I thought it was unfair, and was so annoyed I still recall it :-)
Isn't there a common application, now?
Things are a bit less competitive on the subject tests. A couple questions wrong was still sufficient to get an 800 on Math level II my year.
In hindsight, boomers had a really easy time of it, even some we rightly revere for their contributions. Work hard, or be brilliant, or some combination of the two. That’s not enough today. Ken Thompson told the story somewhere of being literally chased down the east coast after graduation by Bell Labs recruiters. That would never happen now.
Math competitions are nothing like the SAT. Not at all. You can grind your way to an 800 on the math SAT with a basic prep and an understanding of tenth-grade math; getting a perfect score on a math competition is something only a handful of people do each year. The hardest questions tend to be of the type "ok I am not even sure how to start this one" rather than "this one has a bunch of arithmetic and I'm not sure I have time to complete it".
It's harder to normalize performance across schools without a standardized test.
> those who placed in a state math competition are likely to have higher academic abilities
That sounds like a state-run math SAT that would have the same problems.
> And allow the wealthy to better position their kids at the detriment of the middle class.
The upper middle class is where it's actually interesting. There aren't enough wealthy people for the SAT to be a driver of mass inequality. They're already sending their kids to elite private schools, so as long as the Ivies keep favoring those schools, the status quo remains. The most important thing you can to to prepare for the SAT is do lots of practice tests. Those aren't that expensive. Anyone working class or higher can afford them. SAT classes help somewhat, but less than being somewhat familiar with the test. They're moderately expensive. Tutors are where it's interesting, and that's in upper middle class territory.