March SAT Essay Topic: Sommes-nous des idiots?
The SAT essay topic in March was apparently about reality TV shows. I don’t know what the question was. It has not been released. But I have my ring of informants and I trust they would not make anything this encroyable up.
Up until now, essay topics have focused on topics such as courage, authority, scientific progress, pride, community and loss.
Now, we have been asked about reality tv shows.
It would be fine if this were just another essay being written in high school for some burnt out English teacher to get a break from reading Kate Chopin essays. But the SAT is our national exam for College Entrance. It represents the skill level we expect from juniors in high school. AND it was the ONLY essay topic.
I confess, I am prone to idolize the French, so maybe I am incorrect, but I cannot imagine the only essay question on le bac focusing on reality television.
It would be fine if most of my candidates for examination had ever seen a reality television show. And I don’t like to voice such an elitist complaint, but, as long as I’m blogging: What about the smart kids? Don’t they deserve a shot at this test as well?
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Community bookstore is the best bookstore in Park Slope, perhaps Brooklyn. There used to be several wonderful bookstores up and down 7th Avenue (and throughout the city). Now, we have….Community Bookstore. We must stand by the independent bookstore!!! Nothing is more important to our education as a society than the small bookstore… And Community Bookstore is the quintessential small bookstore: quiet, filled with great books, local and dog-friendly. What more could we want? A ten percent discount? Gravy!
7th Avenue between Carroll Street and Garfield Place
BOOKS YOU WILL NEED:
Vocabulary Prep Level 1 [Paperback] by Kaplan
Official Study Guide 2nd Edition by the College Board
The Math SAT Workbook by Kaplan
Crush The Test, your math book for when you’ve cracked 700, is waiting for you at www.crushthetest.com–waiting for you in a dungeon with its whip and
mace. But waiting, nonetheless.
STEP ONE: BUY BOOKS
The SAT books I use when I’m tutoring are The College Board’s SAT Study Guide 2nd Edition, the Kaplan SAT Math Workbook, and the Kaplan Vocabulary Book. If you know that you are already scoring over 600 on math, then I also suggest you go ahead and purchase “Crush The Test.”
The College Board’s Study Guide, the 2nd Edition, is so poorly edited that someone ought to sue them. is a disgrace, published with a full Errata page for the first few print runs. I’m not sure if they’ve had a second print run and made the necessary corrections. I’ll find out this spring, I’m sure. But it’s not just the errata they’ve caught that are troubling. It’s the errors they didn’t catch that are truly annoying–answer choices that I knew were wrong but I still had to look up in the previous edition to be certain. Also, they dumped one test from the first edition…why? Why not make all the tests they can available? As it is, I take at least one test a year just so I can get my mitts on more material.
Why use it at all? It’s the only source of real, live, actual SATs. They weren’t “spiraled” from SATs. They are “SAT-style”. They are real SATs previously administered and published by the very same doughnut-heads who publish SATs.
The Kaplan Math SAT Workbook is full of problems that are completely unlike real SAT problems, but it is a comprehensive review of the math concepts covered on the test. If you work through the entire thing, you will be sure that you know the math the test wants you to know…and then some. In fact, many of the harder Kaplan Math Workbook problems are much too hard to actually appear on a test. And too straightforward. Remember, the SAT likes to take simple math and make it tricky by asking the question in a strange way. This workbook is an opportunity for cross-training: boxers don’t skip rope because they are going to have to skip rope in a fight. They skip rope because it’s an efficient cardio tool and not as exhausting as sparring. Doing hard straight math is great prep for easy sneaky math.
The Kaplan Vocabulary Book I like because it comes as pre-made flashcards. I don’t like flashcards myself because I lose them. (Or my students lose them.) Lost vocabulary cards become especially annoying because the cards you lost are probably the really hard vocabulary words that you have with you because you couldn’t remember them, and now they’re gone! But I do like the flip-style self-quizzing of learning. You don’t need your mother to drill you over breakfast…
I also have a set of Vocabulary Words with “ridiculous reminders” built into them in the back of my own manual “Secrets from the Vault of an SAT Geek” (c). Email me and I will send them to you gratis. Now go look up gratis!
Crush the Test is an agonizing little book by Mathew Kohler, PhD. It is strictly for high scoring math students and they all of them absolutely hate it. It is a soul searing, crushing prep manual and when you are done working your way through it, SAT math will seem like a cake-walk. The only reason you won’t have a score in the high 700s is because you just got bored because the test was so easy. There will be no difficult problems that you are unprepared for. www.crushthetest.com
Except for Crush the Test, you may purchase all of these books at Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
SAT Vocabulary Prep Level 1 [Paperback] by Kaplan
Official Study Guide 2nd Edition by the College Board
The Math SAT Workbook by Kaplan
http://communitybookstore.net
7th Avenue between Carroll Street and Garfield Place
New Year’s Resolutions
I admit it. I’m a sucker for New Year’s Resolutions. I love them. I love making them, I graph my success with them, I journal about them, I jabber to Nicholas about them. This year I resolve to work more, harder, better, on my blog.
So that is my resolution for the New Year. I want to make this blog a resource for kids who can’t afford or won’t go to tutoring. I want to start by leading you through an SAT class. Let’s get started. Email me with questions!
Trying out Thumbtack….We’ll see!
Not really sure what I think of all this, but it’s interesting to see how all these internet websites come together. I like keeping tutors as Independent Contractors. Liberate the Teachers!!!! Free the Students!!!!
Is there an ethical way to approach a math problem?
People worry about the ethics of gaming the test– strategies like using the answer choices to find the answers, guessing when there is not penalty, guessing carefully when there is a penalty. Standardized tests reflect your ability to be test savvy as much as they reflect your knowledge of a subject. Annoying? Unethical?
For example, why do we need to do all the work when we’re approaching math problems? Honor? Do we need to how all the work? If you can figure out an easy way to do the problem, doesn’t that indicate a sort of intelligence that is both creative and practical?
Let’s take this one:
n + 2/n = 9 + 2/9
If you notice that n and 9 are set as equals, its a ridiculously easy leap to the answer. If you want to show all your work, prepare to deal with an irksome little problem.
Kate Harding Editorial on Teens and Bullying
I didn’t write it and I’m not sure how it connects to the SAT or jiujitsu or pie baking, but it is important. I’ve been extremely lucky to teach kids who are actually really “Good Kids” and I like the idea of that phrase continuing to mean something by not applying it to just any kid who happens to be bullying his or her peers in ways that are shocking and cruel. As Kate Harding says here, could we please just have the decency to stop calling these people “good kids”. Of course, we could switch to using “good kids” as a code for sociopaths, but until that irony is firmly in tact…let’s draw the line somewhere, perhaps at gay bashing and bullying?
http://kateharding.info/2010/10/06/on-good-kids-and-total-fucking-assholes
My three year old’s playgroup is thinking about hiring an SAT tutor…
Some of the toddlers in my three year old’s playgroup are already doing a PSAT prep class after Music Together. I don’t mean to be negative, but this seems premature to me. My baby, for one, hasn’t even had algebra yet and so a lot of the math questions are over his head. I’m worried that starting him at such a young age will damage his confidence and he will underperform when it matters most….
JUST KIDDING!!!!!!
That’s my beauty, by the way, and he won’t see an SAT prep class for at least another few months…. But on the serious side, New Yorkers do just make themselves nuts (or get made nuts….?) over these horrible tests…
No, you don’t need to do prep for the PSAT unless you are doing it just to introduce your child to the test so s/he can take it with confidence, or s/he happens to be such a natural test taker that you think they have a shot at a National Merit Scholarship or other scholarship of some sort. Otherwise, SAT prep time for people who are not yet at least freshman in high school would be better spent playing the cello, learning Portuguese, hiking in the fresh air, or eating dinner with their families.
Now, if your child has a high GPA but a low test-taking ability, then yes, absolutely, get him or her into SAT preparation as soon as possible…meaning freshman or sophomore year. Even a quickie class in 8th grade is fine if they are interested or worried. Otherwise, the best preparation is to encourage him or her to study whatever subjects are the most personally exciting in good old-fashioned school.
