/sci/ - Science & Math

>Anyone else taking these fucking tests? What were your scores if you've already taken them?

I took the ACT twice. The first time, I got a 27. Second time, 31.

Also, always take the writing. Most colleges use it, and don't superscore, so don't be fucking retarded like me, and forget to do it and make a much higher score.

i took the ACT 1 year out of high school with no studying and got a 25

i got a 27 on math

if i took it again with some studying, i could probably get around 30-32

You sound like one of those kids who has done a lot of studying so he think's he's smart when really he's just knowledgeable.

>>3677466

Okay.

>Get high score on the SAT.
>Spammed by every other college in the country.

>Take ACT on 4 hours of sleep, get a 34 on the reading section
I've always been extremely good at reading, but what.

I would love to see how some of these Calc IV students and math graduates do on the SAT math section. The SAT only tests concepts up to Alg II, but they actually make you think, it isn't just spitting out information.

>>3677509
And conversely i got a 19 on the fucking essay, because i dont know how they expect me to shit out something high quality in 45 minutes. Im one of those people who make high quality stories/arguments but just need the goddamn time to do it.

>>3677501
>be black
>get 18 on all my sections of ACT
>get into Harvard
>everything went better than expected.jpg

>>3677513
I would to, you tend to forget a lot of detailed small stuff when you get to big boy math. The SAT is all about detail.

>>3677526
>FUCK IS IT [3,5) OR (3,5] FFFFFF
Shit like that is just awful.

>only 5% of black kids score about 600 on SAT math
>50% of asians can

everythingwentasexpected.jpg

>>3677534
meant to say "above"

oldfag here, took the old SAT and the ACT, each exactly once.

SAT math: 730 ; SAT reading 730, combined 1460/1600 overall.

ACT overall: 31. Breakdown was something like math 31, science graphs 28, choose the right word 32, and reading comprehension 30.

I figured I couldn't really improve on either score, so I quit while I was ahead.

Math/Science/Reading are retarded easy to score perfect on, the biggest problem is writing, because the scoring is so subjective based...

Also, underageb&

>>3677597
hint: pages with a blue background aren't restricted to 18+

I got a 33 act, hardest part was the math, aced the reading and science

I got a 34 on the ACT.

36 Science, 35 Math, 34 Reading, 29 English.

The ACT science section is by no means a task in reading comprehension. The whole test is intended to determine aptitude, not knowledge, so that is why it seems like the science section is limited. Not every high school student takes physics or chemistry so there isn't a great deal of specific information covered in the ACT science section. The section is mostly limited to the interpretation of data and the scientific process.

>>3678581
Hint: Yes they are.

Read global rules 2 and 5.
http://www.4chan.org/rules.php

>>3678581
pages with blue background are work-safe.
/sci/ is 18+.

>>3679124
No, the ACT is a knowledge based test. The SAT is an aptitude test.

And both are bullshit. I got a 630 on the SAT verbal section and a combined score of 6 on the essay section for example and yet in all my years of college I never once had a professor give me anything other than enthusiastic praise for my writing (I went to a top 20 school too). My research adviser who is extremely anal about writing quality even told me several times my writing skills were on par with a PhD's and that until me he had never thought a student could write on that level.

700 Reading
800 Math
500something Writing.

I didn't finish the writing and reading sections because I was a much slower reader at the time. My SAT essay was terrible as I am terrible at writing to a prompt on a time limit.
Got spammed by Ivy League but got into none(and not even my safety school because they "never got my SAT scores") I'm a minority who dual enrolled enough to have an AA degree before I finished high school. I applied to the best school in my state in march/April and got in for fall. Fuck my life, why wasn't I born in California where I can go to a top 10 school for taking a shit on a piece of paper in college?

>>3679175
Same here. Bombed the writing but always got great scores on everything I wrote(My upper division lab reports were always praised).

I don't really think "Explain what the quote means in 30 minutes" translates into writing skills.

>>3677445
PROTIP: the scores are based on a bell curve, not your actual results themselves.

You must test in the month that is known to have the lowest scores to score the highest.

Got a 31, 33, then 34 on the ACT, but I'm probably going to do piss-poor on the SAT because it actually requires knowledge and not just comprehension skills. Feels bad.

Yea I think my first time taking the ACT I got a 23. Second time I was in the 98th percentile don't ask me how or why I didn't even study.

>>3679175

>2011
>thinking the ACT is a knowledge test and the SAT is an aptitude test

ishygddt.jpg

Seriously, they are similar tests and they both test aptitude and, to a lesser extent, knowledge. It doesn't matter if some random staff member at your college thinks you're a good writer, he or she is probably two-thirds of a retard anyway. People who claim that widely accepted standardized tests are invalid because they believe themselves to be better than their scores are a joke.

>>3679238
What is a 30 minute writing exercise suppose to measure? It seems a lot more subjective than every other element on the test.

The reason you aspie fucks fail the writing section isn't because you are bad writers, but because they don't care about style or your big words. The test graders are instructed to assess your writing on how clear your ideas are and how voluminous they are.

IE. write a metric shitton if you want a high score. Don't bother with style or even coherency. Just get all your ideas down

Then:

Composite Score : 31
English 33
Mathematics 29
Reading 33
Science 27

Now:

Physics and math major. Funny how shit works out.

>>3679238
>It doesn't matter if some random staff member at your college thinks you're a good writer, he or she is probably two-thirds of a retard anyway.
>A scientist
>retarded

Took the ACT while not giving a shit (leaving problems blank, intuiting most answers), not getting any sleep, and after spending a few years not touching any math more advanced than addition. It was the only section that killed me and I still landed in the top 25% (top 10% for science).

Also I took a the GED once and scored 800 out of 800 on 4 sections, only section that was lower was writing because fuck staying on topic I'm going on a tirade.

>>3679322
>A scientist
>knowing good writing

>>3679312
Basically, it doesn't matter how stupid you are, just make it big and clear how stupid you are?

The LSAT has a much better writing section. The MCATs is bullshit but still a lot better than the SATs.

>>3679326

Do you understand why though? Pretty much everyone who wants to go to college has to take the SAT/ACT. And most people are fucking terrible writers. If they set grading standards and expectations too high they're fucking over a lot of people. So instead they make the standards so that as long as you write something (a lot) that vaguely answers the question you will get a decent score.

Or you could write a great, concise essay with impeccable grammar and diction and get 8 out of 12 because you only filled up a page. Fuck the SAT.

I took the SATs in 2002. 800 math, 770 verbal. I also took a bunch of subject tests - writing, world history, one of the math ones, and I think chemistry, I don't really remember. All those scores were mid to high 700s.

Also, reported for underageb&.

>>3679312
I hate to agree with the troll but this is likely true. 'Writing Education' seems to have gotten away from writing clearly and gone the direction of 'as many words as possible'.

Just think back to high school with it's arbitrary page limits to answer questions which could be completely and thoroughly answered in under 100 words in most cases.

>>3679326
Some professor at MIT or some other school did an experiment where he had a student take a bunch of real SAT essays and hold them up from a distance of like 20 feet from where the professor was sitting. The professor then tried to guess the score just from seeing how much had been written.

The professor got the score right for nearly every essay he was shown.

So yeah, it's all about length.

>>3679343
im 18 dumbass.. seniors in high school are usually 17-18 years old.

by the way - i got a 10 on the SAT essay while only filling 1.25 pages. I must be an orgasmic writer

>>3679343
>Score 800 math in 1990-2000 -> Ivy League
>Score 800 math in 2000+ -> state school
>Idiots in my class get into top 10 schools
fucking jews, why didn't I do more bullshit in high school that meant absolutely nothing to me? Universities are like the guy that says "just be yourself, I like you for you" then fucks the plastic bimbo.

I always regret my sat experience. I was already accepted into a university, and only took it because my mom insisted I do so. Went into it without any preparations, and on too little sleep (late night party)
scored a 1280. Which is acceptable, but I now wonder if I could have applied myself, and gotten better.

Does anyone think the SAT has lost a lot of integrity over time? It seems like a high score just isn't that impressive anymore. Like the GRE, an 800 is "expected".

i took the ACT as a junior only in pre-calc and got a 32 on math
It was before we learned shit about log and ln though, so if i had known those, i very well could have gotten a 36.

nevertheless, i would say 29 is the average ACT math score

>>3679393

I also went in with no preparation and too little sleep, and I got a 1570.

umad?

>>3679416
>>3679416
nope its 21

>>3679376

>>3679426
i meant on sci, presuming people here have a genuine interest in math

>>3679360
>im 18 dumbass.. seniors in high school are usually 17-18 years old.

Yeah, they turn 18 during the year, which would just be starting now. Were you left back?

>>3679393
I would think so.
That was the score I got on my first PSAT, which I took in 9th grade.
After 2 more years of not paying attention in school I scored a 1470 (2190 w/ writing but I was part of the first group of people to have the writing section so I don't normally count it).

>>3679339
methinks someone overestimates their writing prowess...

>>3679418
Not really. But to clarify, I took the sat before it was worth 2400 points.

>score 2030, then 2310 (740, 780, 790) on SAT
>get rejected by EVERYTHING, Rensselaer and Bucknell included
>fuck not being American
>currently lolling my ass off in the UK

2390 SAT

also 4.9w/4.0uw GPA and top 10% of class (3rd but that wasnt measured) with an IB diploma and 5 APs (3 5s 2 4s, fucking english lit)
rejected harvard, stanford, yale, princeton, mit, waitlist rejected from caltech and duke
this was 2 years ago

2040 for my first try and 2270 for my second try on the SAT two years ago, forgot the individual section scores.

I ended up going to a good state school since top-tier institutions all rejected me. I didn't end up with many scholarships either, just a few thousand total.

I feel like I wasted so much time preparing for that bullshit, useless exam. Really that time would have been better spent playing video games.

>>3679636

schools that u got rejected from have like 1000% more applicants than they can accept. MANY of them had your academics, PLUS extra curriculars. although even if you do have ECs it's still a crapshoot.

>>3677445
I know that, even my school counselor told me that.

But what I meant to say was that in the end, the high score meant jack shit; I already had high credentials through my grades, AP courses, and college courses I took in my senior year. I also didn't gain anything by studying for the SAT, since I mostly took math and physics courses in the last two years (and here is another reason I hate the SAT; it doesn't test for real academic skill, as Andrew Wiles and know-it-all-but-really-nothing-special high school students would get about the same score on the math section)..

Really if I spent time just playing video games rather than wasting my time on a standardized exams then I would still be in the same situation, if not better since I would have made more progress on some RPGs.

>>3679969
here
meant to link to above post

>would've gotten a 28 on my ACT
>my shitty persuasive essay raped my score down to a 24
>still accepted into a community college transfer program to Illinois State University

>Everything_went-betterthan~expected.avi

>>3679969

Actually, instead of spending 1000+ hours on math and physics you should have spent 500 hours on school work and 500 hours volunteering in the community, playing sports, building a car/boat/lightweight aircraft, etc

College applications arent looking for the absolute smartest person they can find, they are looking for the smartest, yet most well rounded person they can find. The SAT is basically just making sure you are at a real high school level. There are plenty of high schools out there that will graduate people who can barely read and do basic math... Just because they happened to attend class every day doesn't mean they SHOULD have graduated. That is what the SAT is for... to figure out if you REALLY should have graduated high school

Perfect Score on SAT, 4.0 GPA, fairly good ECs rejected from all Ivy league schools. You literally cannot get into Harvard without 1. Being Famous 2.Winning a National/International Award 3. Having awesome connections if you don't at least one of those with at least perfect everything you might as well chill out high school and just fuck off.

>>3680017
Who the hell is well rounded out of high school? Was it somehow bad for me to realize that every activity that I did, that was not school related, was a complete waste of time that did not progress me towards my academic/career goals? My knowledge is more well rounded than half of these fuckers just by listening to NPR and keeping up with world events. A hobby? A sport? An Instrument? What a colossal waste of time and effort for something completely archaic and useless. I'm trying to get into a University, not a fucking summer camp. Judge me on my academic merits.

The problem is that the SAT is a joke. We have no standardized test that can judge academic merit and grades are a crap shoot based on your high school. Colleges are finding arbitrary criteria just to make up for the deficit of measurable academic merit.

Of course, in high school, you don't realize this. You see your SAT scores and say "Hey, I am above this schools median score and GPA, I should get in!"

35 composite, bitches. Twice (once without writing, once again with writing when I realized I needed it)

>>3680017
Actually I spent over 80 hours volunteering at a local library. I also attended math contests and Science Olympiad, though unfortunately not at the national level.

Really why should anyone give a shit about well rounded people? To be good at what you do requires you to be a specialist. I'm sure we have numerous jack of all trades out there, but good novelists and mathematicians and much less plentiful (though I'm not implying that I'm a good specialist, seeing as I haven't had a paper published yet).

>>3680153
The worst part about this "well rounded" thing is that I got well rounded from going to college and school, not shit I did on the side. By learning little things about everything and listening to the news, I can hold a conversation with just about anyone because I have a genuine interest in knowing about what they do, how they do it and what it is like doing it.

I always here people complain about reading passages about standardized tests but I can't related to that one bit. I enjoy reading about new things, sometimes to the point of becoming enthralled in it on practice tests. I was introduced to the Confucian concept of "li", the magnetic dynamo effect of the earths core, theories for human bipedalism, theories for speciation in rainforests, many styles of painting and music and numerous social critiques just by reading those passages. I love to learn about everything, isn't that the quintessential essence of being well rounded? Not jerking off with hobbies that will impress people?

>>3680177
Well for me knowing something superficial doesn't mean much at all. There is a difference between knowing something and knowing its name. I'm a math person so I grew this way.

But you're going off to a tangent. The SAT test for "well rounded academic abilities," not "well rounded knowledge that will make people like you." Look no further than the grammar part of the SAT, which basically see if you can be a grammar Nazi (and that won't make you any friends). Some of the questions in that section are downright anal. Some other parts will test if you know what the word "obsequious" or "quixotic" means off the top of your head, while in the real world not many people would care if you never use those words.

saging because this is irrelevant to OP's question.

PS, I'm not in math/physics to impress anybody; I live in America so that's almost impossible. I do it cause I like those subjects. If I wanted to impress people I would have tried to become a medical doctor or lawyer.