[willyt]

What age are Americans typically when they take SATS? The geometry stuff is not so bad if you can give visual proofs, pretty hellish otherwise. I think I had to know quite a lot of this stuff for A-level maths as well as Calculus, basic Statistics, Linear Algebra and Applied Maths. But we take these exams when we are 17 and it was 1 of 3 subjects we specialised in for 2 years. Also, regarding your point about calculators, our exam questions were set so that it generally wasn't practical to use a calculator to solve them. E.g. some questions specifically stated that you should give the answer as surd or fraction, it was generally easier / quicker to do the working out manually.

[pflats]

Traditionally, Americans applying to Ivy schools take the SATs sometime midway through their 3rd year of High School, when they're anywhere from 16-17. Many will take it this month.

Also, as you may know, many calculators today have a CAS, a Computer\Calculator Algebra System, that will gladly give responses as a surd or fraction (or even solve a differential equation). To my knowledge, College Board has yet to ban a calculator for a CAS.

[willyt]

Whoa! Calculators were nowhere near as fancy as that back then. We were allowed programmable graphic calculators but the invigilators pressed the hard reset button on the back as you went in to the exam to make sure you hadn't stored anything on it.