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Answer to Quora Question: "How many times can we retake the ACT or SAT in the United States?"

1/19/2023

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How many times can we retake the ACT or SAT in the United States?

Practically as many times as you want. Realistically, that’s about 7 to 10 times per year, for weekend SATs, so maybe 24 to 35 times between 9th grade and the first semester of 12th grade. It looks like there are up to 6 more “school day” administrations that the SAT offers, so you could add 21 more dates to the previous count, for a total of 45 and 56 dates.


I’m not at all sure you could actually take all the School Day SATs, or even just one of them (They’re generally for schools that pay for their students to have a special SAT session, and you have to have the school contact you). The ACT offers a similar program, but I don’t see if there are particular ACT “school days” or not.


The number of weekend ACTs is the same as the number of weekend SATs, so you can take the ACT about the same as the SAT. You’d have to be crazy to take those tests that many times. It would be a better use of your time to work hard in school, do volunteer work, etc. But hey, it’s your time and money.
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Answer to Quora Question "Is the SAT certificate equivalent to a high school certificate?"

1/19/2023

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Is the SAT certificate equivalent to a high school certificate?
​

There’s no “SAT certificate”- you just get an SAT score. No SAT score is equivalent to a high school diploma - that’s a GED (General Equivalency Diploma). See

Get Your GED - Classes, Online Practice Test, Study Guides, More | GED®
Get your GED using official GED test study material, classes, and practice questions. Learn how to get a high school equivalency diploma with GED®.

https://ged.com/
for more information.
Hope this helps!
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Answer to Quora Question: "Do online courses (like Khan Academy) help when preparing for an exam such as the SAT/ACT or is there no substitute to real teacher training?"

1/19/2023

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Do online courses (like Khan Academy) help when preparing for an exam such as the SAT/ACT or is there no substitute to real teacher training?
​
There’s no substitute for real live teacher training. Khan Academy videos, etc. are great, but video sessions with a tutor or teacher are better, and in-person training with a teacher or tutor is better. A video can’t stop and answer your questions. Video conferencing doesn’t give you the same experience as being with a person “live” in the same place. It’s just easier for you and the instructor to pick up on each other's body language and to pay attention to each other. It’s really easy for a student on Zoom, for instance, to be distracted by the Web, especially if the video lesson has many students and only one instructor.

It’s also better to have tutoring one-on-one or in small groups for the same reason. It’s too easy to lose focus in a large class, and the instructor can’t give you the same individual attention as in a small group.
Hope this helps!
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Answer of Quora Question: "Do colleges ever rescind their acceptance letters if the student does not reply within a certain time period after receiving the letter?"

1/19/2023

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Do colleges ever rescind their acceptance letters if the student does not reply within a certain time period after receiving the letter?

Yes. At some point, if you don’t respond and take the next steps necessary attend a college that’s accepted your application, your acceptance will be rescinded, and a “wait list” student will be offered your space. Make sure you read everything the college sends you, and respond well before every deadline!
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Answer to Quora Question: "To apply to the University of California, Berkeley, do you need to take the SAT or ACT?"

1/19/2023

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To apply to the University of California, Berkeley, do you need to take the SAT or ACT?
​
No. A California court has ruled that it is illegally discriminatory for any University of California campus to use the SAT or ACT. So not only do you not 
need to take the ACT or the SAT, UC Berkeley can’t even consider those test scores when deciding on your application.
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Answer to Quora Question: "Do all students take the SAT subject tests in English?"

1/19/2023

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Do all students take the SAT subject tests in English?

The normal SAT (or SAT I) is always given in English, so yes, all students that that test in English.

The old “SAT subject tests,” most recently called the SAT II tests, covered many subjects, including foreign languages, so at least some SAT subjects tests were not given in English. However, since those tests are no longer given, this is a moot point.
Hope this helps!
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What is the reason why there are no multiple choice questions on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT)?

1/19/2023

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What is the reason why there are no multiple choice questions on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT)?
​

There are many multiple-choice questions on the LSAT. In fact, most of the LSAT questions are multiple choice questions. Sorry, either you are deeply mistaken, or you’re a troller.
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Answer to Quora Question: "What is an example of an easy question on the SAT that many people tend to get wrong?"

1/19/2023

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 What is an example of an easy question on the SAT that many people tend to get wrong? 

I can give you an example from my own PSAT (which I took in the late 1980s, when I was in high school). The very first math question, which generally is the easiest, since the SAT and PSAT like to put the easy questions in the front, and the hard ones in the back, was simply “2^3 = ?” (imagine that shows as 2 with a superscript of 3; sorry, I can’t put that here).


The very first answer choice was 6, and I picked it. It’s certainly not that I didn’t know 2 to the third power is not the same as 2 times 3; I was a 16-year-old kid honor student who was in special advanced math classes, who would go on to be class valedictorian (and be a Finalist for the National Merit Scholarship, so I did pretty well on the rest of the PSAT). If I’d taken literally a few more seconds to check the answers or think a bit longer about the question without even checking the answers, I’d have gotten it right.


Tempting wrong “distractor” answers can make students get easy questions wrong, especially when they’re at the beginning of math sections where students expect ridiculously easy questions, can make students choose wrong answers when they’d otherwise certainly get the right answer.


TL;DR for the Math section: Read the whole problem and check all the answers, especially if the problem looks ridiculously easy.


I believe “Vocabulary-in-Context” questions are the easy questions for the passage reading section. Students who are overconfident or pressed for time, may simply choose the most common meaning of a word that most English speakers understand. For example, a “plane” could mean an airplane, a woodworking tool, a endless two-dimensional geometric space defined by three points, or a level of existence or consciousness (e.g., “The mystic told his audience of the existence of a higher plane of consciousness, outside of the reach of human existence”).
Most likely, the correct answer would be the last, since that would be the most “literary” use of the word, but it’s not necessarily the right answer. If you read an English reading passage on the SAT, it should be clear which one is relevant. Most likely, the most common meaning in American English, “plane” as short for “airplane” would be a distractor for people who didn’t bother to read the passage because of time pressures (“Oh no! I’ll never get this test done - better start guessing!”) or overconfidence (“What kind of idiot doesn’t know what a “plane” is? Most people don’t write books about carpenter’s tools or geometry, so…”).


But the “literary” usage may not be the right answer, since “smart kid” answers are also very popular distractor answers in SAT-land. See, the people who write SAT questions are familiar with the English class student’s technique of writing vague, glib, answers that manage to sound “smart” while being practically substance-free. So the idea of “plane” referring to a level of spiritual existence could be wrong; even if the passage were about mysticism, the passage might make note of a carpenter's tools as part of analogy or description of a scene.
Similarly, the passage could use “plane” in one sense, but in another sense in a different part of the passage. Make sure you’re giving the meaning of the word in the line they’re referencing. The SAT is not above giving the meaning of the same word in another part of the passage as a wrong answer.
​


TL;DR for English - read the Vocabulary-in-Context questions and make sure you’ve checked the right line numbers.
Hope this helps!

 

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Answer to Quora Question: "Can I choose to take the SAT or ACT or is it random?"

1/19/2023

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Can I choose to take the SAT or ACT or is it random?
​

You can choose. You can take both. There’s really no preference between the SAT and ACT, as far as I know, so I don’t know where Sara Matthews got the information that led her to write that “elite universities quietly favor the SAT.”
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Answer to Quora Question "Do Ivy League, Big Ten, SEC, or Pac-12 schools have more poor students than rich ones?"

1/19/2023

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(23) John Linneball's answer to Do Ivy League, Big Ten, SEC, or Pac-12 schools have more poor students than rich ones? - Quora
 
​Define “poor.” If you define “poor” as anyone who qualifies for financial aid, then 54% of Ivy League students are “poor,” according to the following site:
Ivy League Members Financial Aid Comparison
View and Compare the 8 Ivy League Members with Number of Financial Aid Received and the Average Financial Aid Amounts.

https://www.collegeevaluator.com/ncaa-conferences/ivy-league/financial-aidFor the Big 10, the percentage is fairly close - 58.77% overall. So almost 3/5ths of Big 10 students are “poor.”
The Big Ten Conference (B1G) Financial Aid Comparison
This Page Lists and Compares Financial Aid Statistics Between The Big Ten Conference (B1G) Colleges for beginning students and all undergraduate students.

https://www.univstats.com/comparison/ncaa/big-ten-conference/financial-aid/By the same metric, 83% of students in SEC colleges are “poor.”
Southeastern Conference (SEC) Members Financial Aid Comparison
View and Compare the 14 Southeastern Conference (SEC) Members with Number of Financial Aid Received and the Average Financial Aid Amounts.

https://www.collegeevaluator.com/ncaa-conferences/southeastern-conference/financial-aid/#:~:text=Southeastern%20Conference%20%28SEC%29%20Financial%20Aid%20Comparison%20For%20full-time,awarded%20federal%2C%20state%2C%20local%20and%2For%20institutional%20grant%20aid.For the PAC 12, the percentage of “poor” students is 69%
Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) Members Financial Aid Comparison
View and Compare the 12 Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) Members with Number of Financial Aid Received and the Average Financial Aid Amounts.

https://www.collegeevaluator.com/ncaa-conferences/pacific-12-conference/financial-aid/#:~:text=Pacific-12%20Conference%20%28Pac-12%29%20Financial%20Aid%20Comparison%20For%20full-time,awarded%20federal%2C%20state%2C%20local%20and%2For%20institutional%20grant%20aid.Hope this helps!
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