I Test Poorly

“I test poorly.”  How many times have I heard a student tell me that?  I almost know what the next line will be.  If we are talking about an academic subject, it will be, “I study hard, but I just keep getting bad grades.”  If we are talking about SAT exams, it will be, “I get good grades in school, but I got a low score.”

In the first situation, my response is to ask the student to describe how s/he studies for a test.  Almost always, I hear something like, “I read over my notes and then look at the text.”  My response is not quite as blunt as, “You’re not preparing for the test.  All you are doing is re-reading and becoming familiar with the material.  Let’s talk about how to memorize.”  Nevertheless, that is the gist of the message I convey.  This student is fooling him/herself.  Reading notes a couple of times is not learning; only some of the material will be retained.  Learning – memorizing – is really hard work.  The reason this student has been doing poorly on tests is because s/he does not know how to learn.  Very few teachers actually teach how to memorize.  Schools behave as if students inherited a genetic package called How To Learn.  That’s not the way it works.  Some of us may be better at learning than others, just as some of us are better at sports, but we all need to be taught how to learn, just we all need to learn how to improve in a sport.  Teachers assume that the students walking into their classrooms in September have learned study skills in some earlier class.  In fairness to teachers, they are asked to do so much that teaching how to study is usually more than they can handle.  They just don’t have the time. 

Tutors teach students the missing skills.  If the students are willing to do the hard work that is required, they learn new behaviors, and their school work starts to improve.   I never get tired of looking at those smiles when everything starts to click for a child.

The second situation is different.  Students who do poorly on the SATs often do not know how to approach SAT questions.  This exam is not like any school test, and to do well, the student needs to know, practice, and internalize test-taking strategies that are unique to the SAT.  I tell students that it is not that they do not test well but, rather, that they do not know how to take the test.  Again, tutors can help. 

I also see another factor that influences a student’s poor score.  I have worked with individual students who were weak in math or who had a poor working knowledge of grammar and punctuation, and I work on remediating those areas.  But virtually all of my students have weak vocabularies.  Clearly, these students will not perform successfully in the vocabulary section, but they also will suffer in the reading comprehension sections.  The ETS loves to ask questions like, “In line 7, another word for xyz is….”  How can a student with a poor vocabulary answer this type of question?  I have observed these students incorrectly answering as many as 2/3 of the vocabulary-based question.  We’re not talking about obtuse, rarely used words.  These students are unfamiliar with words like satire, ironic, prejudicial, adhesive, or tempestuous.  No amount of SAT-prep course work or tutoring will help a student if they do not know what a question is asking.  The message is clear: start building your vocabulary now, and learn and practice those strategies.

Should I Guess on the SAT?

Some tutors advise their students not to guess, not ever.  Other tutors encourage their students to guess after eliminating just one answer choice, while still others belong to the “don’t guess unless you can eliminate at least two answers” camp.   The commercially available prep books advise students to guess if one answer choice can be crossed out, and the College Board recommends guessing if one or more answer choices can be eliminated.  Faced with this inconsistent advice, what should you do?

The answer is, “It depends.”  As you will see, whether you should guess is determined by your familiarity with the SAT test and your knowledge of yourself.

Random guessing does not work.  How well would you do if you did not read the questions and just guessed for every multiple-choice question on the exam?  Just for the moment, let’s assume the SAT does not have a free response essay or any grid-in questions.  This imaginary SAT test is composed of 44 math, 67 critical reading, and 47 writing questions.  Each question has five answer choices, so a random guess on any one question has a 20% chance of being right.  That means that every time you answer a question, you have a 1 in 5 chance of choosing the correct answer.  The probability of getting all 158 multiple-choice questions right is:

              1    +    1   +    1 

               5⁴⁴     5⁶⁷       5⁴⁷

The chances of randomly marking the bubbles in the answer sheet and getting every question right are really, really low.  Random guessing does not work.

If you do not have any idea how to approach the problem, if you have never seen any of the vocabulary words and cannot determine possible definitions using your knowledge of prefixes, suffixes, and word roots, leave the answer blank and move on to the next question.  Do not guess.  You have a better chance of scoring higher by skipping these questions than by guessing. 

Scoring the SAT.  If you answer a question correctly, you gain 1 point.  If you skip a question and leave the answer space blank, zero points are deducted from your score. If you answer incorrectly or guess and chose an incorrect answer, ¼ point is deducted.  In other words, there is a ¼ point penalty for guessing.  Why does the SAT penalize you?  After all, your teachers don’t score their tests this way.  The chances are your teachers are not testing and measurement experts.  The SAT test designers say statistically, if you were to guess the answers to 5 questions, you should guess correctly once and guess incorrectly 4 times.  You would gain one point for the correct answer.  But you did not know the answer; you just guessed.  The SAT test designers do not think you deserve a point just for being lucky.  They think a score should reflect your knowledge and ability.  So they counter-balance that point be deducting ¼ point every time you guess incorrectly.  Since statistics say that you would guess incorrectly on 4 of those 5 questions, you will lose a total of 1 point.  That lost point counteracts the point you earned when you guessed correctly, and you end up with a zero point gain.  There is nothing fair or unfair about this approach.  It is just an application of statistics and probability to test design and analysis.  [But the test designers don’t do this on the ACT, you say.  True.  But don’t you think there is a compensatory factor employed in the conversion of raw score to scaled score?  Read my blog on the difference between the ACT and SAT].  The point is that random guessing alone does not work. 

Take control of the SAT scoring technique.  What happens if you can eliminate one answer each time you guess?  Now you have a 1 in 4 chance of guessing correctly.  If you answer 4 of these questions, you will gain 1 point and lose only ¾ points.  You have just gained ¼ point.  This gain increases when you eliminate two possible answers.  If you can discount 3 of the answers, every time you answer two such questions, statistics say you will gain 1 point and lose only ½ point.  Statistically, guessing after you have eliminated one or more answer choices improves your score. 

Make intelligent guesses.  You know how the SAT is scored.  Imagine that you are working on a difficult question and that you have eliminated one answer.  You really do not know which of the remaining choices is the right answer.  Do not just make a random guess.  Use the strategies that you have learned and practiced.  They were taught for a reason.  They help you make an intelligent guess and increase the chances that you will guess the correct answer.

Intangible factors that affect scoring.  I have been saying that you have a statistical chance of improving your score by guessing only after eliminating at least one answer choice.  That is because we can calculate the mathematical advantage of guessing.  But there are other factors involved in test taking, factors that cannot be quantified yet have a very real impact on SAT performance.   

For example, if a student had eliminated 3 of the 5 answer choices knowing why there were incorrect and then resorted to pure, random guessing, the chances of guessing the correct answer is ½.  But if the student uses a test-taking strategy, there must be a slight and statistically unidentifiable gain beyond 50%.  Even if a student selects an answer just because it “feels right” or looks like a word that had been encountered in French class, the balance is tipped beyond a simple 50:50 chance of being right.  The lesson is simple: know and practice those strategies so they become part of your test-taking arsenal.

I have worked with some students who were remarkably good guessers.  These students usually had a strong command of the subject matter.  They really knew their grammar, punctuation, and syntax.  They knew how to set up algebra problems, knew the formulas for sequences, and had no trouble working out geometry problems.  I have also worked with many more students who, when we started to work together, were just lousy at guessing.  I use very different rules for these two populations.   Students in the first group are able to answer most questions and rarely need to guess.  For them, guessing after eliminating just one answer works.  For the second group, guessing only after eliminating at least two answers is a requisite.  These students also need more practice in the art of guessing.

I observed a student read a sentence that asked her to identify the word that means the same as agreeable.  I had asked her to think out loud so that I might hear how she approached the question.  The first answer choice was belligerent.  She said, “I know this word means aggressive or pugnacious, so it is wrong.”  The next word was fain, and she said, “This word looks somewhat negative, and it reminds me of fail, so I think it means something like damage or incomplete.  This choice cannot possibly be the right answer.”  She said the next 3 words, divergent, succulent, and apathetic, did not quite seem right, but she said succulent was a positive sounding word, like agreeable, so she selected that as the right answer.  She said she was guessing on the last three answers.

This student knew belligerent was incorrect and appropriately eliminated it as a possible answer.  She did not know that fain means agreeable.  She thought she was making an intelligent decision when she rejected this choice, but she did not seem to realize she was just guessing, despite all the reasons she gave.  She thought she was guessing only on the remaining three answers. 

I told her she was guessing on the last four answers.  Although she still would have chosen succulent, she would have been approaching the question more aggressively had she been more self-aware, knowing what she knew and when she was guessing.  This self-knowledge is very important.  It influences the decision whether to guess or skip a question.  I worked with this student on guessing strategies, and eventually she reached the point where she would have said, “I know the first choice is wrong because it means something totally different than agreeable, and I am guessing between the remaining answers.  I select fain because it stands out from the other choices.  It’s a strange word.”  Not only had she learned more strategies, but approached the question with confidence.   

Are you a high scorer?  If so, you have both the content knowledge and the analytical skills to score well.  You should answer all reading and writing questions, and you should try to answer every question.  There will probably be very few questions that you cannot answer.  One or two wrong won’t cost you more than two points on the final score, but if you stick with them and get them right, you could grab an 800.  For you, on the vocabulary questions, if you do not have a clue, picking the weirdest word is often good advice.  You have a good “word sense” and this strategy often works. 

If you are a low scorer and do not know yourself well, you need to build a stronger foundation.  You need to increase your vocabulary.  You need remediation in algebra and geometry.  Just as important, you need a guessing routine.  First, you need to limit the amount of guessing.  I have worked with students whose first impulse when faced with a challenging question was to guess.  I have had these students tally the number of questions answered with 100% confidence and compare that total against the number of questions.  We then took a look at this second group of questions on which they had guessed.  When they gave these questions another chance, they were often able to solve them or at least get closer to the correct answers.  Their scores went up and we started to talk about TTBG – think twice before guessing. 

We considered the number of questions that must be attempted in order to have a chance of earning the score that the student had set as a goal.  Keeping this number in mind also encouraged the student not to give up on a question too quickly.

The statistical approach employed by the College Board does not take into account the difficulty level of the question.  It treats all questions as if they were equal.  But we know that the first third of the test section consists of easier questions, the most challenging questions appear at the end, and questions of moderate difficulty are placed in the middle.  I recommend guessing on the easy and medium level questions and knowing when to skip on the harder level questions.  Some students should keep working these problems and guessing when necessary, while other students will do better by skipping the really hard questions.

Students become better guessers after they have worked through many practice questions and have a sense for what the test designers are looking for.   Try as many practice questions as you can.   Don’t just look at the answers at the end of a commercial book’s chapter, read the explanation why that answer is correct or how it was calculated.  Take the practice tests released by the College Board.  Become so used to questions that you begin to know what the test designer is looking for.  When you arrive at this stage, you will have also fine honed your guessing ability. 

Some students do better on difficult questions by beginning to work on them and knowing when to put them aside and proceed with the rest of the section’s questions.   When these students have completed the section, they return to the unanswered questions.   There is no longer any pressure to finish, and often the correct answer is easier to work out. 

What kind of college are you considering?  If you are looking at highly competitive schools, you will need the highest possible scores, and you will probably need to guess.  If you do not need incredibly high scores, you have a greater freedom and can afford to skip more answers.  You can spend more time working on each question.

Are you beginning to sense that the question of whether to guess does not have a simple yes/no answer?  Good!  Whether you should guess really does depend – on the reality revealed by statistics and upon your personality, knowledge, and test taking behavior.  I individualize guessing strategies when I work with a student.  I hope you know yourself well enough so that you do the same.

Be a Red Ball -- The College Admissions Essay

 For most students, writing the college essay is unlike anything they wrote in English class.  There, they became adept at expository writing and were able to craft a five-paragraph essay.  They were accustomed to arguing a point or analyzing a piece of literature.  But explaining why the admissions committee should select them over all of the other applicants is often a far more difficult topic.  For a start, it feels really uncomfortable.  How does someone select that one, life-changing experience?  How can someone write about a unique personality trait without bragging?  The University of Chicago is known for asking strange questions.  One year, one of the essay choices was, “So where is Waldo, really?”  How can a student write about something as weird as that?  The college application process is an anxiety-producing experience, and being confronted with a seemingly flippant essay prompt is just not appreciated!  No wonder students dread the college essay.

When I help students in the college admissions process, the greatest proportion of our time together is spent on the college essay.  I try to help my client understand what the admissions committee really wants.  When asked how a particular work in the arts inspired the applicant, the committee is not asking about a painting or a piece of music.  When the student is invited to write about his/her thoughts about global warming, the essay is not supposed to be about stratospheric chemistry.  So what is the admissions committee really asking?

There are only two classes of essay prompts: one uses an event and the other asks about a personality trait.  But both are just vehicles that help the admissions team get to know the applicant.  All questions boil down to: how are you special?  Consider that Waldo question.  I think it is asking, “How do you stand out in a crowd?“  Put more simply, what gives you dinner plate-sized eyes and a red and white striped hat?

I went to a tag sale and saw a deerskin bag sitting by itself near the edge of a table.  I picked it up and looked inside.  It was filled with white marbles.  There must have been fifty marbles in that bag.  As I jostled the bag, one red marble appeared from behind a layer of white marbles.  Just one red ball.  It really stood out.  That is what I help my clients become.  I talk with them and help them discover how to be a red ball.

I help students move beyond a white ball topic.  “When I volunteered at the local shelter, I realized how fortunate I am.”  White Ball.  “The Most Important Moment in my life was the day my team won the championship.”  White Ball.  “We should all be concerned about global warming.”  That white ball is so dull it must have fallen out of the bag!

Let’s turn that community service experience into a red ball.  I don’t want to read you brag about how lucky you are to have a place to sleep and plenty of food in the kitchen.  Tell me about what you did at the shelter.  How did you feel about working there?  Was it a personal challenge?  How did you overcome the apprehension you felt as you walked in the door?  Who did you talk with while you were there?  What was that person’s story?  What did you talk about?  How did you feel about that person?  Did you perceive that person’s dignity and humanity?  What enabled you to make this connection?  Is there a lesson in this experience?  What insight about life did it give you?  Did it change the way you look at the homeless?  Did it change the way you think about the nature of community service?  Were you able to apply these lessons later on, in some other part of your life?  The answers to these questions reveal who you are as an individual.  They touch on your core values.  They make you stand out from all the other applicants.  They make you become a red ball.

Sometimes we race through life so quickly that we miss the lessons that are there for us.  Sometimes we need someone else to ask questions and help us to understand in a new light.  When a student goes through this process correctly, the result is not just a compelling essay.  The student does much more than become a red ball.  When done correctly, the student learns something about him/herself.  Gaining self-knowledge is an important part of growing up, and it comes from unexpected places… even college essays.