| 100% environmental. We had an "elite" SAT training program at my high school. (A very smart teacher ran it). Learned 100 words per week, by straight up rote memorization. Mastered math formulas to the point that you could do them without understanding the theory. Studied for the test, not for the concepts. We all weren't learning anything useful. It was basic rote memorization, no concepts, no nothing. Students were pronouncing "Epitome" as "Epi-tom" (instead of "e-pit-tom-ee"). But it don't matter, as long as you recognized the unfamiliar words and memorized dictionary definitions... and then practiced analogies for 2 to 3 months at a time... you will get it. We learned how the SAT was graded, how to pick out easy questions. How to skip the harder questions that mattered less for your score... and focus your mind (while it was still fresh) on the more important questions. We even learned patterns to hypothesize which of the sections wasn't gonna be graded. (one section of the SAT is not graded. It is a baseline for next-year's SAT) After the SAT, most of us forgot the meanings of those words. But we got the score we needed to get into college. Those who study the SAT have a supreme advantage over those who don't study it. Everyone who took the class shot up by like 200 points in both Math and Reading. The teacher was very frank. It was a "study for the test", "beat the test" attitude. And frankly, it worked. I'm pretty sure anyone who went through the training I did would have scored 1300 minimum on the 1600 test. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, Male, Female, Christian, Jewish, Muslims. Everyone you can think of was in this class, and everyone got significantly better at taking the SAT. |