Up Your Score (62 page)

Horizontal Lines Method

Out-to-In Circle Method

Artist Cross-Hatching Method

Unfocused Method

Moron Dot Method

Unclear on the Concept

Uh, What Was the Question?

Suicide Doodle Method

To perfect your technique, follow these rules.

1. Leave the point of one of your pencils
dull
. Although you don’t want to use a dull pencil on the math section (you want a good pencil for scratch work), it will save you time on the verbal section because the more surface area the point of your pencil has, the better coverage a single line will provide.

2. Although you don’t want your arm to be too stiff, you should press hard on the answer sheet. The darker the mark, the more likely the scanner is to see it. This is an important factor since you won’t necessarily be filling in your circles all the way.

3. On the math grid-in questions, there is space above the grid to write in the answer. But the computer only registers the circles, so you don’t have to waste time writing in the answer.

4. Practice, practice, practice. Try to get your time below 0.3 second per circle. Following are a bunch of circles for you to practice on. If you get your time below 0.1 second, you may be able to qualify for the
O-
lympics.

In recent years, the SAT has been called unfair. Why? Because of its alleged bias against women, minorities, and the poor, all of whom consistently do worse on the tests than rich white males. (If you’re rich, white, and male, shame on you!)

In previous editions of
Up Your Score,
we gave you statistics on specific questions that were proven to be biased by gender, race, or income. But because so many people recognized the obvious biases in these questions, the ETS has stopped publishing statistics for specific questions. It has also tried to eliminate openly biased questions, and, in fairness, we could not bring ourselves to lambaste them for questions they used years ago.

Because of the nature of the SAT, however, many still consider it biased. Basically, the test is a fast-paced game that stresses speed and strategic guessing. (Unfortunately, it’s used to predict success in college, which does not necessarily depend on speed or strategic guessing.) This type of test favors the way archetypal American boys behave. Female students and students from homes that don’t place an emphasis on speed and guessing are therefore at a disadvantage when taking the SAT.

JaJa says: The College Board’s slogan is “Inspiring Minds.” More like supressing minds . . . Oh, the irony.

Gender Bias
On average, girls score about 40 points lower on the SAT than boys do, with most of the points lost on the math section. While many people argue that boys are better math students or girls’ grades are inflated, research has shown that girls perform better in both high school and college courses. The SAT, therefore, consistently underpredicts the performance of female students in college. (The only thing the SAT claims to do is predict college performance.) Because of objections to a perceived gender bias, the ETS has added the writing section to the SAT. This section is supposed to boost girls’ scores, but it doesn’t really address the real problems of standardized tests. But by learning how to take the test, girls can score higher than boys—it is just a matter of developing skills that aren’t generally encouraged in girls (cockiness, rushing through things, guessing, etc.).

Race Bias
On the 2009 SATs, the following were the average scores (out of a possible 2400) for various racial and ethnic groups:

Minorities may do worse on the SAT because of income bias (see below); in general minorities have lower incomes than whites do.

The ETS tried to bridge the racial gap in 1970 by the lame gesture of adding one reading passage per test concerning minorities. However, the benefit of the passage is questionable, except for
Up Your Score
readers who use it to their advantage (see
page 48
).

Income Bias
Richer kids tend to do better on the SAT than poorer kids. This may be the most difficult bias to overcome; it is certainly the most blatant. First, low-income students frequently do not have the educational opportunities that more privileged students have. Another very widespread problem is SAT coaching. Many people who can afford it shell out about $900 to take an SAT prep course. This gives those students a huge advantage. However, you, the informed consumer, paid only $13.95 for this book and will have your score, and your consciousness, raised immensely.