Beating the test

Since I may decide to go to university in the States, I need to take the SAT. I’ve just spend an hour studying for it today, and I can report that I learnt practically nothing. This doesn’t mean that I can stop preparing, because if I were to take the test tomorrow, I’d probably get a fairly mediocre score. The main problem is that I don’t know the test, and since everything is timed, it’s crucial to understand exactly what types of questions will be asked and where they will appear.

Between now and the scheduled test date in early June, I’ll probably have to spend about an hour every day preparing. I’ll memorise all the words off the vocabulary list, but apart from that, I don’t think I’ll learn anything much.

There are many other things that I would rather do with that hour, but those SAT scores are important enough that I will have do what is expected and learn to beat the test.

There is, nevertheless, one important lesson learnt from this experience: standardised testing is to be avoided because the results depend as much on scholastic ability as on the students’ capacity to beat the test.