Study Materials Review: College Panda SAT Math

I am often introduced to a new resource by my students.  That's how I became aware of The College Panda SAT Math Advanced Guide and Workbook.  The students was one for whom I would usually recommend PWN the SAT Math Guide: an advanced math student who has covered most of the material but who needs practice with looking at problems from different angles.  He had already been through PWN the SAT and was looking for more problems.  Somehow he stumbled across College Panda.

The tag line on the back of the book reads, "If it's not in this book, it's not on the test," and that's pretty nearly true.  This is a comprehensive book with a LOT of problems.  The problems represent a wide range of styles and difficulties and are nicely divided into categories so you can target your problem areas.  The problems also "feel" right.  The most difficult problems in each sections tend to be a tad more difficult than the most difficult problems on the SAT.  That's a good thing.  (Actually, in a few spots the problems resembled those on the SAT Math II subject test.)

The book does not include any practice tests to work on strategy or timing, so you will need access to some practice tests for that purpose.  (The same company has helpfully provided a book of practice tests in case the 7 - as of this writing - provided by the College Board aren't enough.  I haven't taken a good look at it, yet, so you can expect a review of that eventually.)

If this book has one weakness, it is that it is light on strategy.  It consists of examples, practice problems, and annotated answers.  There is little in the way of advice about timing, approaching multiple choice questions, or anything else that might fall under the category of "testing tip."  The author, Nielson Phu, seems to feel that the road to a perfect math score shouldn't involve any sign-posts for students who can't answers questions through sheer math prowess.  While I agree with that in principle, even the best math students needs a toolbox of techniques to pull out for when she or he doesn't immediately see how to approach a problem.  Students in the 600's to low 700's might get the most out of this book when used in conjunction with a tutor.

Cheating on the college entrance exams

My kid went off to a prestigious college. He came home for Christmas break convinced that he was one of the few people on the planet who didn’t cheat on his college entrance exams. Apparently, everyone there had a story about his cousin’s boyfriend’s sister who cheated on the exam by doing fill-in-the-cheating-method-here. Some of the stories sounded rather unlikely to me, but the news at the time was all about that kid in ….New York was it? …who made a gazillion dollars impersonating other students and taking their exams for them.

In May of 2013 I took the SAT II Math Level 2 exam and I assure you, none of the cheating techniques would have worked. That’s not to say they never work, but the cheating techniques I hear about all depend upon having a dishonest or incompetent proctor. How prevalent is that? I don’t know. I do know that if your testing strategy depends entirely on having a bad proctor, you are likely to run into trouble.

I was recently asked to review a book entitled SAT SNEAK ATTACK: How Computer Geniuses Hack, Beat and Cheat America's Most Feared Exam by Peter Wayner. At 33 pages, it would make a better magazine or newspaper article than it does a book. The gist of it is this: 1. Poor pay causes the proctors to do a bad job. (There are no statistics on the percent of proctors doing a bad job, but since they are all paid poorly I suppose we are supposed to assume that they all are therefore doing a bad job.) 2. Because the proctors are not paying attention you can hide helpful information in your calculator, such as a dictionary. (Having your calculator out at all during the verbal sections is forbidden, so this requires a very inattentive proctor.) 3. You can also hide a program that helps solve math problems, although, based on the description, it sounded to me like this particular help would only be useful for students who would otherwise score very low in the math section. 4. Large numbers of students are cheating using this method. (Again, no actual statistics. This is based on anecdotes from college students.) 5. The author personally alerted the ETS to this egregious problem and they metaphorically rolled their eyes. 6. This means that the math help program is apparently “legal” and any test-taker would be stupid not to avail himself of this advantage.

The SAT was designed in such a way that you do not need a calculator AT ALL. You are allowed to use a calculator because too many high school students think they can’t do math without one, and because they aren’t really testing you on arithmetic anyway. The top test-takers know that using your calculator as little as possible will actually help you go faster in the math section. Spending time and money downloading some program that will solve triangles for you is pretty silly. The triangles on the SAT can nearly always be solved in your head. In the time it would take to practice using the program, you could just practice the math in the first place. But I guess then you wouldn’t have a fun anecdote about how you cheated the SAT.

Fair Test should use more honest reporting practices

In 2009, our local newspaper printed an article reporting that Wake Forest University had decided to join the ranks of “test optional” schools.  The university no longer requires applicants to submit an ACT or SAT score, although students may submit scores if they wish.  This, and subsequent articles, both in print and online have tried to give the impression that Wake Forest is part of a growing trend.  In fact, someone following this topic may begin to wonder if the days of college admissions testing are numbered. 

When you read the articles, the name of one organization keeps cropping up.  Fair Test is a non-profit group that campaigns against standardized testing.  A visit to the web site, www.fairtest.org, reveals that they are against all forms of standardized testing for a variety of reasons, some of which are valid. Calling for the end of college entrance exams is only a piece of their mission.  It is, however, an important piece, and one section of their website is devoted to their campaign against using test scores as a part of college admissions decisions.

As part of this argument, their website includes a page of 800+ test-optional schools.  The message is two-fold:  first, if these schools can make admissions decisions without test scores then everyone can, and second, there are so many schools out there that don’t require test scores that a student can avoid the college entrance exams by choosing a school from this list. Eight hundred is a lot of schools.  In fact, if you consider that there are between 2000 and 2500 four-year institutions in the United States, more than 800 would represent a significant percentage of the overall number of schools.  However, a quick glance at the first page showed quite a long list of…art schools?  Did fine art institutes ever consider a student’s test scores? Wouldn’t they be more interested in a portfolio or an audition?  Also right there on the first page was at least one theological seminary (some theological seminaries don’t grant undergraduate degrees and those that do grant a very limited number), and – this is the one that made my jaw drop – a for-profit university. There were also a number of colleges that I had never heard of.

At this point I began slogging through the list in an effort to determine which schools were included.  School after school turned out to be, upon closer examination, a school of the arts, a theological seminary or a for-profit institution. There were also a good number of tiny liberal arts colleges, a few of which have apparently closed their doors since the list was compiled.  I did, however, run into a handful of prominent universities that are test-optional.  After several hours of this activity I wondered if there was a faster method of determining exactly how many colleges and universities could be legitimately considered “test optional.”  That’s when I found page xxxv of Fisk Guide to Colleges 2013.

According to the Fisk Guide, of all of the colleges and universities in the country, there are about 175 that could be considered “selective.”  Fisk includes all of these in their guide along with another 100+ schools that they consider “interesting.”  They do not include fine arts schools, theological seminaries, or for-profit universities. That part of the weeding process had already been done. This year, they included a page listing the schools described in the guide that are test optional or “test flexible.” The actual list is preceded by five explanatory paragraphs a few of which sounded like they could have been lifted from a Fair Test press release, including a sentence that said the number of test-optional schools had reached “a critical mass,” followed by “For the first time, students who wish to avoid getting involved in the admissions test rat-race can do so while still enjoying a range of colleges and universities from which to choose.”

We’ll talk about the rat-race in a minute, but first, a word about “test flexible.”  It seems that some schools are willing to let you opt out of submitting SAT or ACT scores if you submit your SAT II, AP or IB test scores instead. Oddly, these schools are included in the list.  I don’t get that. What issues does the SAT test have that the AP test doesn’t? They are written and administered by the same company.  Little Johnny flunked his ACT because “he doesn’t test well,” but he aced his IB exams? How did that happen? I can assure you that at my house there was way more anxiety over the AP exams than over the SAT. With the SAT you at least have a chance to take it again. Make a separate list of “test flexible” schools if you want, but we need to remove those schools from the “test optional” list.  When we do, we are down to 60 schools. 

Now a word about the “rat-race” of admissions testing.  Here’s the thing:  If only 175 of the schools in the country are “selective” that means the vast majority of the schools are NOT selective.  For every school that admits fewer than half of its applicants, there are at least a dozen that will take just about anyone with a pulse.  Many of them are fine schools.  Let’s take the University of Mississippi for example.  Ole Miss is a venerable institution and you can get an excellent education there.  Many students dream of one day attending Ole Miss and you can see why they would. That said, the school admits over three quarters of its applicants.  It’s not much of a stretch for them to say, “You know what, honey, you don’t have to send your test scores if you don’t want to.”  Even before they decided to be “test optional” I imagine many of their applicants weren’t sweating over the SAT’s because they figured they could get a good enough score anyway.  I know that there is a highly visible group of students who are scratching and clawing for every point on the test because they want to apply to a top-tier school, but I don’t think that’s the norm. I think that for an awful lot of students their dream school is within easy reach.

So. Let’s remove from the list those schools that are not “selective” on the grounds that for a non-selective school removing the test requirement doesn’t make much difference in the admissions process. This leaves us with 20 or so schools.  Seventeen are small liberal arts colleges.  Many of these are highly selective, but as they are small and they have few applicants (relatively speaking,) they can use a much more personalized admissions process.  If a small, liberal arts college is what you are looking for, then having these test optional choices may be exactly what you need. 

The remaining three schools are:  University of Texas at Austin, Wake Forest University and Worchester Polytechnic Institute.  Worchester Polytech is small and quite unique.  I don’t think other engineering schools are going to drop a test requirement just because that seems to be working out for Worchester, but if your scores are terrible and you want to be an engineer, this might be the school for you.

The University of Texas at Austin is interesting.  Like twelve other schools on the list, they have a footnote which says that students are required to submit their test scores “if minimum GPA and/or class rank is not met.”  The other schools came off the list when we eliminated the non-selective schools.  So what is the GPA/class rank requirement at UT-Austin?  Apparently, by state law, all public universities must automatically accept any high school graduate that is a) a resident of Texas and b) graduated in the top 10% of his or her class. You don’t meet both of those requirements? Then you better take a test.

So it seems that if you want to attend a small, liberal arts college, you do have a range of test optional choices.  If you want to attend a major research university that is not particularly selective you may have a range of test optional choices depending on where you live. If you want to attend a selective, major research university, you have Wake Forest.  This can hardly be considered a “critical mass.” While other colleges may eventually drop their testing requirements, I think college entrance exams will be a component for most students for at least the next decade.

I think it is dishonest to suggest that the number of test optional schools is so large that students need not take a college admissions exam. By blatantly padding their list with names of schools that should not be included, or that should be included in separate lists, Fair Test invites questions about their integrity and detracts from their overall message.

Check your calculator for the "logbase" function.

Does your TI-84 calculator have the "logbase" function? Take a moment to check. Turn your calculator on and press the "math" key. Hit "^" once or twice to scroll up the list.  If you have the "logbase" function it will be item A or B in the list. If you choose it, you will see "log" on your screen with a space to type in the base of the logarithm and another space to type in the number you wish to take the logarithm of.

If you with to take log to the base 3 of 81, you could press "math", choose the "logbase" function, type in "3", press ">" to tab over and then type "81" to get the correct answer "4."

Whether or not your calculator has this function seems to depend more on how new it is than on which model you have. It's a convenient function to have if you are taking the ACT or the SAT II Math 2 subject test, so take a moment to get out your calculator and look.

When Should You Take Your First College Entrance Exam?

When Should You Take Your First College Entrance Exam?

It can be easy to procrastinate taking those college entrance exams. High school students are busy, and who really wants to spend a Saturday morning taking a long, difficult test? When should you take that first test?

You need to find a balance between waiting until you have learned the material on the test and making sure you have your test scores in time to fill out your college applications.  In general, I recommend that a student first take the SAT as soon as he or she has completed both algebra II and geometry.  For the ACT it is helpful to have taken at least some pre-calculus. However, you should take your first college entrance exam no later than the spring semester of your junior year.

Taking a college entrance exam early is important for a number of reasons:

1. If you do badly you will still have time to get help over the summer and then retest before your college applications are due.
2. Senior year is hectic. If you take the test junior year and do well, that’s one less thing to worry about.
3. What if you leave the test until the last minute and then you are sick on test day?
4. The college of your choice may require an extra test, such as an SAT II subject test. If you had counted on taking the SAT twice during the fall of senior year, you may find you don’t have enough test days left.

Even if you think an extra semester of school would improve your score, don’t postpone your first college entrance exam until senior year!