Jimmy Higgins

No, it has nothing to do with race, though it does. It has nothing to do with intelligence, though it does. I'm asking about the SAT's, which is one of the two massize tests that must be undertaken by a high schooler in order to show colleges how smart they are. But do they?

I was a decently intelligent person in high school. I took a couple AP courses, and alot of Accelerated courses. I also took CAD as well, a decision that was probably one of my best ever. I wasn't an honor's student in English, but I wasn't a dummy either. So I question why I did so poorly in Verbal on the SATs. The answer is obvious, the fucking words on the test aren't used in the modern world, and only can be found in works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Lewis Stephanson. So my question becomes this, why the hell are some people capable of doing well in verbal when they can't of heard the words either?

The answer, which is also why this becomes a race issue, LATIN! All those damn kids that aced Verbal took Latin. No one told me to take Latin. I took French, seeing I was french-canadien and all, I figured it was what I should take. It'd be fun. Not a single person told me to take Latin, so I got a miserable 440 in Verbal, needing a strong showing in Math to punch me to 1100.

So now that I have proven (don't take that too seriously) that Latin is the only reason why these kids bested me in Verbal, shouldn't something be done about it? I mean, how many inner-city schools offer Latin to be taught in the first place? Why aren't we told to take Latin in the first place to do much better in Verbal? Why is the intelligence of people being measured solely on their knowledge of Latin?

Shadowy Man

Maybe this is why you did poorly in verbal?

seebs

I never took Latin, and I did pretty well on the verbal section of the PSATs. (For historical reasons, I never took "real" SATs.)

That said, I think a lot of it is just that people *can* have heard of all those words. I seem to recall seeing no words I didn't know on the PSAT.

How much do you read? I probably averaged a book a day from about age 5 on up. Maybe not quite so much now, but now I'm a full-time writer, so I do a lot of other reading.

wildernesse

I had nine week of Latin in 6th grade (worthless really), and did quite well on the SAT verbal. In fact, I made a higher SAT verbal score than Rufus, who took 4 Latin classes, two of which were AP. (He adds that after the first/second year of Latin classes, Latin is really about literature analysis and not vocabulary.)

Latin probably does have a lot to do with it though, because if you can think about roots of words and such you can sometimes get the meaning of words you've never seen before. But being aware that words have roots and can be connected to each other is a big step--so the study of any language can help as well. As long as it's study, and not just the type of language "education" I received in high school.

I agree with seebs also, that reading a great deal does help--and being interested in words in general. I don't recall seeing lots of words that I didn't know--of course, when my essays in high school were "peer-edited" my "peers" often commented that my writing was hard to read because I used big words.

--tibac

JetBlckNewYr03

Well, my school just started offering Latin last year, and I will be taking it for the first time this year. When I take the SAT I will know whether or not it truly does help.

Aside from taking Latin, there are a lot of other things you can do to improve your SAT scores. They now have SAT Prep classes in a lot of high schools that you used to have to pay hundreds of dollars for.

For the verbal part, there is only 18 analogies or so. 1/3 of them are "easy"; another 1/3 are "medium" and the remaining 1/3 are "hard."

All of the questions are in descending order from easiest to hardest; so it's not really that hard when you think about it. The rest of the verbal test is grammar and critical reading which is fairly easy.

The new SAT scheduled for 2005-2006 will eliminate the analogies in the verbal section, add a self-writing section, add questions on algebra II along with the algebra and geometry questions on the math section, which will allow the top score to be a 2400 instead of the former 1600.

Vylo

I used to average a book every 2-6 months when i was little, yet I read at a college level when I was in 6th grade. I have no idea how I did that, and I'm still convinced I was at my most intellegent during my later elementary years.

Jimmy Higgins

I didn't read too too much. I mean, I took on Robinson Crusoe in the 4th grade. But most of the books I read were no really what I'd call literature. I can't read quickly. This is my greatest problem. As for the Verbal part, I still feel that the words used on the test, I've yet to see in Dostoyevsky or the likes. The words are barely english. But thats my view. I was wondering about the views of others. Interesting stuff.

callmejay

I read a ton as a kid, but never Victorian stuff and rarely "classic" stuff. I got a 710 or something verbal. If you love to read, you'll probably know most of the words. (You can also memorize lists of words that are likely to be on the SATs of course.)

Non-praying Mantis

I took two years of Latin in HS, plus Vocab (baby latin) in the 6th grade, and I got a paltry 550 on the verbal SAT.

(690 on the math, though )

NPM

notMichaelJackson

I attempted to learn several terms from this massive list of vocabulary words to improve my SAT score, but it didn't help very much, but I'm trying to learn one word from the list each day to improve my vocabulary.

When I first took the test, the score sheets were sent to a mail facility (I think it was in New Jersey) that was suspected of being tained with anthrax, so I had to take it again (for free). The results of the first test were much higher than the second, so I wasted my time taking it again. Also, in Illinois colleges and universities only care about ACT scores, making the SAT an even more meaningless test on my part.