Would love to see ACT and Math AP's.....I took both SAT and ACT. Went to school with someone who got a perfect 1600 on PSAT. We call fillable forms = Scantrons
SAT tests basic math skills, but exams are very long (including verbal), and grade boundaries are stringent so a slight loss in concentration will cost a lot of points. AP Calculus exams are similar to A-level maths.
SAT math test starts to test attention to detail under pressure more than anything else. It's a good test for surgeons, bad test for mathematicians. And, it's really frustrating that it throws in all sorts of "gotcha" moments, where if you solve a problem in a way that is mostly valid, but miss something (i.e. factor something and one of the solutions is actually invalid but you're trying to answer quickly so you miss it), you get a 0 for that question, even though you actually understand and can apply the concept. That's what I dislike about those tests. They're also not good at catching people who are more talented. So, the ceiling is too low and based on the ability to maintain concentration under pressure, rather than one's ability to interpret and apply concepts, which is what actually gets you somewhere in math and physics.
@@hellomate639 their reasoning is that because the SAT needs to be impartial to disadvantaged students, i.e. ones who aren't exposed to higher level math which people in higher level classes have better experience, they test basic concepts in convoluted ways since that's just a personal skill thing rather than if you took that class before and understand that concept better
@@jimbermelon The thing is, disadvantaged students are at an even greater disadvantage. There are so many basic patterns that aren't drilled enough in school that help tremendously with the SAT. Namely, factorizing (which is taught, but perhaps underemphasized?), and adding/subtracting equations, especially applied cases of adding/subtracting equations. That's just not a very intuitive thing until someone shows you how it works and you get some practice.
@Opus 32 While I agree they try to call you out they didn't do a full length exam so that shouldn't be a factor. A full length exam is like 3 math sections and 2 English or something (Not sure since I got caught in the years where they had writing too)
SAT math scores range from 200 to 800. Each version is scored slightly differently. On one version you might need to get all questions correct to get an 800 while on another version missing one will still give you a perfect score. Top US universities will want scores above 700 (roughly 50 out of 58 questions correct) and obviously the higher the better. Tech schools like MIT are even more selective. In the state of Michigan all students take the SAT at the end of their junior year of high school (16 or 17 years old with one more year of high school before graduating). 530 and above is considered "college ready" which is defined as having a good chance of getting a C or higher in a first year college class. A 530 is getting half of the questions correct. In Michigan 70% of students do NOT meet this goal. The mean SAT score is 470 (22 questions correct). In several of the school districts closest to me the mean score is around a 400 (16 questions correct) which indicates that some students are doing worse than randomly guessing. No, there is no consequence for "failing" the SAT. Students get the same high school diploma and if they go to college (most likely a community college -- a college that offers two year degrees and courses that transfer to a four year university) they take remedial math classes. In most cases I doubt they retain anything from those courses either. Yes, scores on the verbal part of the SAT are equally dismal.
The mulitiple choice element does not allow for following a reasoning, and I can see some of the finding roots the error of putting ALL roots rather than just the 'real, or practical' roots would be done by some, so they know the method, not the reading of the actual question which is a common mistake of some clever people (I a thinking of BBT Leonard using wrong units on his explosive mixture). The rest I can see a lot of slog work of number moving
The femur is the bone in the thigh - it's the strongest bone in the body and is used for approximating height in skeletons. The 'equivalent' arm bone is the humerus (upper arm - which is why when you hit your elbow it's said you've hit your funny bone). Lower leg bones are the tibia and fibula.
For the SAT, no school requires a perfect score. Typically 95% or higher will get you into any college you want provided your grades are good and you have extracurriculars. Another thing to point out is that on the real SAT, there are some questions that actually don't count towards your score when graded (they are testing new question styles and such) where if you get really lucky, that may end up being one that you miss!
ehhhh, couple of corrections no schools require a perfect score, absolutely. Although a 780 is the bottom 25th percentile score at MIT and Caltech, meaning that ideally you would get perhaps 1-2 wrong max. Most schools are test optional though nowadays, so yeah, you're absolutely right in that grades and extracurriculars are far more important than the sat. on the SAT, the test questions are in section 5, a completely separate section. they dont put new/different types of questions in the actual exam, that would be absurd, so a 57/58 is just a 57/58, depending on the curve, that could be anywhere from a 770 to an 800 in the math section. source: took it a couple months back and am applying to colleges now
@@Planegod Why would it be absurd? It's pretty normal for standardized tests to have non-scoring experimental questions mixed in. It's a good way to gather data. It's commonly believed that the (modern) SAT has moved all the experimental questions to "section 5", but they DON'T actually promise that. They just promise that section 5 will bring the total number of scored questions up to the correct total. The manual says "Any section of the SAT may contain both operational and pretest items."
95% and good GPA & EC will get students into MANY colleges but certainly not “any” There are people with 1600 that gets rejected by 1st tier (Ivies, MIT, Cal, Stanford)
I'm a falconer, and peregrines absolutely do wait on at tremendous heights - a mile is not unreasonable at all. Their vision doesn't allow them to see things more zoomed in than we do, it's more like it's higher resolution. They'll see a duck or pigeon flying along and dive and it's just stunning.
When you have two linear equations in a system and they don't have a solution, all it means is that they are parallel lines, and they therefore have the same slope. Solve each equation for "y" and then you have it in slope-intercept form, where you can then just equate the slopes of each.
SAT scores are only one factor in college admissions, and how important it is depends on which college or university you apply to. But I think a single question being wrong on the entire SAT (assuming you got perfect scores on the other two subjects, English and writing) would be fine for almost any admissions 🙂 I'd be interested in seeing how you handle math AP exams; since you mentioned A-Levels are more specialized, that sounds more like our American AP (Advanced Placement) exams. They're in specific subjects, higher level than the standardized tests, and count for college credit while you're still in high school; but they require you to take an AP-level class to learn the material before the exam, so you have to specialize a bit while still in high school. They're scored 1-5, with 5 being the best. I took Calculus I, Calculus II, and Chemistry AP exams way back when I was in high school, and I remember them being more intense than the SATs.
Yeah would be much more interesting to watch them take AP Exams. The SATs are designed to not be very difficult and its more demonstrating a solid foundational knowledge in general math. Also I don't think there's an AP Calculus II?
@@brandon4375 There is. I think they were called Calculus AB and Calculus BC though for some reason. Or at least there was when I was in high school 13 years ago 😥
@@IceMetalPunk still called AB and BC. It used to be that “A” was precalculus, B was calc 1, and C was Calc 2, but they have dropped that conceit while keeping the course and exam names
I remember being terrified when I took my AP Lit test because I finished in like, 45 minutes for a 3 hour exam and knew I would be too stressed to make good revisions so I just took a nap. Got a 5.
30:15 I recall being told (back over a decade ago when I took these exams) that the questions are not necessessarily in increasing-difficulty order. And therefore a skill for test-taking is to quickly recognize harder questions, skipping them, and returning to them after you've completed a first pass. (Whether that skill is useful for anything other than timed test-taking is another question...)
Very interesting videos very entertaining. I was a high school student in 1966-67 and took these exams. I scored well in math but not close to perfect, i was 16 or 17 years old. I wanted to attend MIT but my application was never answered. I ended up at a state university, then was drafted into the Army. In time I completed the BS degree and used the GI BIll to fund a Masters at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. It worked out in the end but rough start. Today I am retired and playing with CAD, IOT and 3D Printing as my hobby. Great energy and personalities in the videos, Thank You. Dennis in Virginia
Q26, the pollen one. I’m no biologist but I do have a keen interest in palaeontology and it is indeed a recognised technique to take lake bed core samples and examine pollen counts to infer the quantity and distribution of plant species over the past, where other contemporary measurements are not available. Seems like a reasonable approach to me.
I like the fact that for question 12 Tom converted 0.6 into 3/5 because he "couldn't" divide 18 by 0.6 and somehow that's clever... where he could have just divided 180 by 6 to get 30. Which is a trick he uses later in the test anyway.
Having taken this before, thanks for reminding me of their hilarious names like 'heart of algebra" and "passport to advanced math"! I can definitely say that missing one point on the math subscore will not dash Ben's hopes of getting into top schools. There probably is a score below which you'll be 'screened out' at Harvard and whatnot, but a point or two off from perfect should be very safe. Also, you can take it multiple times if you really didn't do well (and can afford the test fee), and you only have to send the best one to colleges. They'll care much more about your extracurriculars and teacher recs than a few points on the SAT, which certainly comes with its own set of issues, like an extracurriculars arms race among well-off students (some kids I've tutored say they feel they're doing way too many things just for the sake of their college applications) but at least it's a better system than letting one test make or break your future. P.S.: I'd love to see you and Ben try the AMC, the first stage in the American IMO team qualification! It's 75 minutes for 25 multiple choice questions, with 18 or 19 correct usually being the cutoff for the next round
Good summary! According to the SAT site, you can choose which score (and the date) you want to send. BUT some schools may require scores from every time you took it. In almost all cases, students do better the second time they take it.
For people who have non-traditional academic backgrounds but are academically able, not counting standardized tests like the SAT is a huge and extremely unfair disadvantage. For a myriad of reasons, not everyone manages to assemble an impressive portfolio of achievements to woo colleges with; the vast majority of people don't even come close. But among those people are some very gifted individuals. A simple test takes a few hours, where extracurriculars etc can take hundreds. They should consider both, or either, but not just eliminate these types of standardized tests.
Even with the best SAT or ACT score; you can still be rejected from top colleges because of how competitive it is. Another thing about getting a good SAT or ACT score is you can get a very good financial scholarship that can give a person a full ride or close to a full ride scholarship to several colleges considering colleges in the US are ridiculously expensive.
Nah. Arm is humerus. Forearm is radius/ulna. Upper limb refers to both. Likewise for lower limb with the thigh (femur) and leg (tibia/fibula). There are slight variations but this is the general nomenclature. Shin refers to the tibia and often the anteromedial surface.
@@IceMetalPunk in informal communication, yes, it is often used that way. Formally not. If you said someone fractured their leg in a medical setting, they'd assume it was somewhere between the knee and ankle and want clarification.
7:00 For Q5 I'm not sure if either Ben or Tom fully understood why -3x is not the right answer. Yes Ben is right that the square root symbol is defined as the positive square root. But if x0 given in the question means it must be 3x.
When I took the SAT as a high school student I missed one question on the math section - I know what it was because I realized that I had made a mistake right after the test was over. (I divided by a negative on an inequality and forgot to flip the inequality sign...28 years ago... but I'm not dwelling it or anything...) It's not scored in a linear way - missing one got me a score of 790 out of 800. In theory the mean is 500 and the standard deviation is 100, with scores ranging from 200 - 800. That's still a very, very good score, more than good enough to meet the test standard of any school in the US. That said, it's not enough to ensure admission anywhere, because a student's grades, recommendations, extracurricular activities, entry essays, etc are also factored in to admission. I almost certainly wouldn't have gotten into Harvard, for instance, because they've got tons of kids applying with extremely good test scores and basically ignore them as a result. I mentioned this in another comment, but it's important to remember the intent and population that take this test as well. In much of the US, every single student takes this, regardless of their future plans. It's not the A-levels, and it's not intended to be. The original intent of the SAT was to design a test that could predict success in college, that's it.
I had to think about this while listening to you, but I finally recalled that in the U.S., we call it the “slope” of the curve rather than the “gradient.”
I'm a parent of a high school student who is in the thick of college applications and testing. These days, SAT is used less than ACT as a measure. The higher the score, (usually) the more scholarship money is available from the school in the form of 'merit scholarships.' ACT or SAT score, along with GPA, combine to determine your level of merit scholarship - with some offering full ride scholarships for perfect scores. The more selective the school the higher your scores need to be to get merit scholarships, and highly selective schools (MIT for example) don't tend to offer merit scholarships at all since every student would qualify. Some highly selective schools will also be interested in subscores - so on ACT, for example, more weight may be given to the science and math subscores (the STEM score) than the overall composite score that includes reading and English. And even students with perfect SAT and ACT scores aren't admitted to some colleges - there may be some other factor that the schools are looking for to set students apart in a highly competitive academic environment.
Hi, you should check out the sat subject exams. They usually had more interesting questions. Certain universities required these subject tests for certain science/engineering/math programs which required sat biology/physics/chemistry/math. I remember the math subject exams tested algebra, geometry, trig, and calc and it felt like a grind going through them especially when you had to take these back to back for the different subjects. They contained between 50-100 questions depending on the subject.
Someone who works at an American college and previously the Admissions staff here! It very much depends on where you are going if SAT scores are significant indicators for admission. A lot of community/state colleges (2 or 4 year only institutions) do not care as much about such scores, and even offer different tests for students to take if they want a higher score or if it’s been a while since they were in high school. It is only an indicator of where to start you off with math and NOT an indicator for acceptance. Universities and Ivy League schools may use SAT as ONE indicator for acceptance, but a majority of the Universities (at least where I live and in my experience) will also look at what college credits you already have under your belt, things completed related to your declared major, GPA, etc etc. Universities honestly much prefer that you have your first 2 years already completed and then transfer to them to begin your major-related courses. I would say the biggest thing with SAT is that if you are going into a STEM field, it kind of dictates how many classes you will need to take (ex. If you score very low, you may need to take several math courses just to get to a regular College Algebra course, which could take a whole year to do) and may affect when you can take certain science courses (ex. At my college, students can’t take Human Anatomy and Physiology if they have not done their College Algebra. Same goes for certain Chemistry and Physics courses). Hope this helps!
@57:00 When I was taking this for #33 I reasoned if the mean was 1600, I could chuck the 1600 from the set. Then 1200 and 2000 cancel out as they were 400 off the mean in either direction. This reduced it to the mean of 700 and x was 1600, so it had to be 1600 + 900 = 2500.
I used to teach students SAT prep (gave them strategies for studying for the math sections and we also covered a lot of the content that typicaply comes up.) I believe I've heard of the positive answer of the Sq root as the "principle root" and this is what kids are typically taught initially since negatives confuse kids early on. If you think about it, it makes sense that the Sq rt of 4 is 2 and also -2 because either one squared gets you 4.
A radical always implies the principal root. If the index of the radical is odd, the principal root is the ONLY real root for that radicand. For a radical with an even index root, the principal root is the nonnegative real root. It's not about kids being taught that to avoid confusing kids early on. It's literally how the radical symbol is defined. The radical gives ONE result. If you want to get BOTH real even index roots, you MUST include a plus or minus symbol in front of that radical. There is a difference between being asked to evaluate the square root of 64 when given a square root radical and being asked to identify the square roots of 64, which would be both 8 and -8.
Been about 15 years since I took the SAT, but from what I remember each wrong answer is about 10-20 points off, so you guys would be in the 780-800 range which is amazingly high and all other things considered, you'd stand a good chance at getting into an Ivy League. I think my score was about 700 on the math section which I remember being decently good so getting 780-800 is probably top 1 percentile.
Part 2 question #21 is actually very easy to solve without a calculator, if you simplify the equation. First, multiply both sides by 100 so that you're working with integers, then expand the rhs, and finally isolate the variables. You're left with 8x = 2y. Since you're given y and want x, solve for x in terms of y: x = y/4. It's not a stretch to imagine the problem's author(s) specifically chose 100 and 4 here because US students would be familiar with a 25 cent coin and a 100 cent $1 bill.
Greetings from Greece! I have a small comment about Q 30. There is a theorem from geometry that states: "If one of the acute angles of o right angle triangle is thirty degrees then its opposite side is half the hypotenuse". So no trigonometry is needed. Angle A=30 degrees, by the aforementioned theorem, and then angle B=150 degrees (because A+B=180 degrees). The video was quite fun and informative though! Thanks!
30. In the U.S. I drill the relationship that a 30-60-90triangle has sidea of 1:sqrt3:2. This gives angle A at 30 degrees, and B is 150 by parallel lines.
SATs have gotten easier in recent years (according to tutoring websites) and statistical averages. They have also cut the hours of the test down. They used to be up to 4 hours in length and now they are only 2 hours (for all sections total). This example is a much easier type of math test than the one I took to get into university. Others have mentioned, tests used to contain some pre/calculus. Also the students would typically need to take them age 15-16 if they plan to apply for university on time in their 10th or early 11th grade year. Age 17 or 18 would be too late, unless they are old for their grade. I took my SAT test age 15. Getting a perfect math score or missing only one question would be great, but you can't test only in math, the SAT requires you to test in all subjects and the total score is pointed up, so if you scored very low or not very well in the other test portion, this could damage your chances at attending a university of choice, even with a perfect math score. And, vice versa (a perfect score in the other portion, and a low score in math). Unlike A-levels, one cannot rely on achieving an A or A* in specific subjects and just pursue a degree/course in that subject at a US uni. You need to score well enough across the whole test to gain admission to a higher ranking uni. Lower ranked / less competitive unis won't care as much if your score is passable.
#26. By looking at the layers of sediment in the lake, you can find the history of the adjacent tree poulation, even when the trees are long gone. Also, you're looking for the growth of the population, not for the growrh (i.e diameter, height) of the tree.
Do JEE Main and JEE Advance math problems it will be great to see you both take this as challenge this is university entrance exam in India for top tech/ engineering school admissions.
About 19:09 In Sweden you first learn about systems of equations in terms of the intersection between two lines. So at least I think of this question in terms of finding the coefficient that makes the lines parallell (hence no intersection)
i think the top, top, schools like MIT there would actually be a difference, a noticeable one even if your high school grades, extracurricular activities, and interviews were exactly the same, the higher score would be more likely to be chosen. now most colleges if not all take other things into consideration, I, for example, got a 1100 on the SAT but was still accepted to Ohio State even though they recommend having at least a 1250. this was because of the much more difficult classes i was taking in high school, like AP calc in my sophomore year. also i could see how being in a shop class, having extracurricular activities, and having certification in the engineering industry, all in high school through battling some serious illness that caused me to be out of school 1/3 of all of high school. could help them in deciding who is worth letting in or not. thats why in American school its important to stand out, not just academically, because you can still be below average academically but still have a great work ethic and large colleges will pick that up.
As an american, getting just 1 problem wrong won't hurt you getting into a university (assuming you also did well on the english portion) except for the less then 1% acceptance rates universities. (this will be made a bit worse if you are going for a stem major) But you can still get into an amazing university, and the less then 1% acceptance rates universities are so competitive they might turn you away with a perfect score.
From the US, and I have the odd distinction of taking the rest twice, but with 4 years in between, and yhey completely changed the test between those two times. And I also tutor kids now, about 10 years later. I first took it in 8th grade. The math section was horrendous. I had never practiced (because you don't need to take it until you are going to college), and some of the math questions were more like puzzles. Like finding the patterns in numbers and saying what number would come next, and there was one type of problem that didn't really make any sense to me back then, amd it wasn't because of the math. I couldn't understand the directions. It was probably closer to a mix of today's SATs and a little bit of an IQ test. Then they added a written portion, and the math became more reasonable. Now the written portion is often by choice, and the math is even better. Most schools are VERY strict about SAT scores, so even if I got a kid's score up by a couple hundred points (the perfect SAT is a 1600 if they is no written version, which adds another 800), the parents demand more out of their child. If you miss one of the "trial questions," nothing is deleted. If you get a question wrong, they subtract .25 points. You get zero points for an unanswered question. You get 1 point for a correct one. So people can be scared to try a problem, because they are penalised for trying and not succeeding. Which is bullshit. While some schools are starting to back away from their dependence on the SAT scores for admittance, a lot of people who apply to Harvard with a perfect score and are valedictorians do not make it in.
I teach 4th grade in the US (9-10 year-olds) and they have to use those number grids with decimal points and fractions! If YOU find them confusing, imagine how they feel!
I thought it was interesting that Tom made a pretty significant mistake on 22 (at around 44:00) but that it didn't cost a point on the test. He put f(0) = 5 rather than f(0) = 30. If the question had asked how many guests were invited after 5 years, it would have given a possible answer of 80 as a distractor almost surely. Instead it just asked whether the function f(t) was inc/dec and linear or exponential.
Next you should try the ACTs. While the SATs are more well known because they've been around longer, it's actually a 45/55 split among which test students use for applying to college/university here in the US.
While all colleges still look of course at your whole SAT, including the reading section, I've found that generally the top schools care a lot more about the math sections, which is lucky for this scenario as you guys only did the math section. I think it's kind of an unsaid thing in the world of American higher education that the math section is considered easier in a logical sense than reading, so a lot of the top colleges look most for almost perfect math section scores, while being more liberal with how they view the reading/writing portion of the SAT. Also, score-wise, each "section" is given a score between 200-800 (adding up to the total range of 400-1600 for the entire SAT, including reading), with the actual score being a multiple of 10. You'll be hard-pressed to find someone at the top STEM-oriented schools, such as MIT and Caltech, who DIDN'T get at least a 780/800 on the math section. They would probably let a lower 720-780 on the reading section attend as long as the math score is essentially perfect. Nevertheless, the top schools have average SATs of roughly 1540-1580 (and provided that they follow the informal rule of expecting a near perfect math score, that would give the reading section roughly an average of 740-780). Speaking on scores, the SAT is graded on a different curve every administration. While the total specifics of that have never been officially released to my knowledge, here's some anecdotes for you. I actually got exactly the math subscores that you got when I took the SAT a while back: two 15s and a 14. That was in result of me missing 2 questions total if I remember correctly, although I forget which sections they were. They gave me a 780/800 on the math section from that. However, a friend of mine who took it on another day also missed 2 questions and got a 790. An acquaintance of mine missed 2 and was still given the full 800/800 during another test session. While the curve won't vary that much, you can see how for different test-takers who basically missed the same exact things to be determined to be from the lower expectations of top colleges all the way to a perfect score. As for why my test's curve screwed me over so much, I think it could have been because I registered for a late summer session, when a flood of both overconfident 11th-years and desperate 12th-years needing a score to put down for colleges all took it. (for context the SAT is typically taken in the spring of your 11th year, although some may take it earlier on in the fall/late summer of their 11th year, or put it off until the early months of their 12th year) You also mentioned scholarships at one point. We have a private-ish/public national scholarship system known as the National Merit Scholarship. However, they don't actually consider your SAT, but your PSAT (Preliminary SAT, a similar yet completely separate and different test that is usually taken in the fall of your 11th year).While this is the only well-known scholarship that places emphasis on test scores/academics, it also heavily considers other extracurricular things such as clubs, sports, and leadership positions that students participate in. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of scholarships that having a high SAT score would be advantageous in.
Disagree with the verbal section being considered less important. You just see more 800 scores on math than you do 800 critical reading but it is still possible to get 800 verbal. Also depends on what you want to major in that determines focus on scores stem obviously will look at math score more closely, liberal arts/ humanities programs probably verbal is more important.
1540-1580? AFAIK no college is consistently averaging 1550+. And depending on major, I wouldn't agree that RW is more important, there's just a lot more people who can get perfect math sections. I consider myself much much better at reading than STEM, but I got a perfect math section on both the PSAT and SAT and a 740 and a 790 for reading. 800 readings are super rare. If someone tells me they got a 1570, I will automatically assume they lost all the points on reading.
@@cryptic2610 Several of my friends got perfect on math and reading (and when writing was introduced, that too), and what they all had in common is they were all very good at math (not so much at reading/ writing) and thus were able to treat nuanced reading/ writing questions in a very "right or wrong, what's the formula" way that is required for standardized tests. I think people who come to the SAT better at liberal arts than math are already a bit more set up to fail in that sense.
@@cmdtrigun I'm far better at writing than math, and I got a 1590. I guess there's a level of being focused on objectivity that is required, but if you don't understand what you're reading well, you're absolutely screwed.
As far as the answer sheet, the name is filled out with the same fill in the bubble procedure, just on the other side of the paper as the test answers. And yes it's entirely automated grading with a few fringe exceptions like machine failures
the highest you can get on math sections is 800. That's exceptional. More and more schools are not considering scores! Unfortunately, because my son did extremely well. Like 99.5% tile
All us computer students from the 70s know the powers of two up to 65535 at least. Always wanted to ask a 21st century mathematician what they think if Android calculators not being able to do a reciprocal!
re: question 26: Archaeologists may have no other option than to count pollen to estimate plant growth. So yeah, it's realistic in that you'd want to do it with live trees to establish your model.
That's true. When you have two linear equations in a system and they don't have a solution, all it means is that they are parallel lines, and they therefore have the same slope. We usually teach students to manipulate the equations into slope-intercept form and equate the slopes. Then solve for the unknown constant. This is not as advanced as they mentioned in the video.
I was amazed at how simple the questions were on this exam. I took the SATs back in either 1971 or 1972 and they weren't anywhere near this easy. And we didn't have calculators back then either. None of these really needed a calculator. A couple needed some long arithmetic, which were easy using pencil and paper once they got complicated enough to not be able to do them in my head. I only watched Tom's video for taking the tests, and felt he took longer doing fraction reductions instead of just doing the division right away. (or other arithmetic)
Missing one question on the math section of the SAT could result in a score in the top 1% of all test takers, and in the top 25% of students at the most selective universities in the United States.
I think the time limit would be an issue for me. Running into a few false starts, as one might, the stress levels could well be alarming. I'm not even very test anxious. Arguments can be made for and against this test design.
The fun thing is there are two standardized test in the USA that use different scoring systems. Would be interesting to see how this compares to the ACT.
Hmm, I seem to remember this test used to have more geometry questions, like finding the area between several shapes for instance. It also used to have a few trigonometry questions and pre calculus questions.
Whenever I had an exam where I was allowed to use a calculator (never at university though - studied Math), I brought at least 2 calculators. Just in case someone else would need one
The square root symbol doesn't mean only give the positive answer. The quadratic formula has +- because you do that part twice, to find two separate intercepts of the equations because there's at least always two. That plus or minus means, addition AND subtraction. But if an equation is f(x) = sqrt(2x) then for 0=sqrt(2x) there are 2 possible solutions.
Selective American Universities say they consider many factors in admission. SAT, or ACT scores are just one piece. They care about course grades, and the rigor of the school where the courses were taught. They consider extra curricular activities. And they have certain other standards which they do not reveal.
On the SAT math I took in Ohio, I scored a 780. I missed one question (a really dumb miss) about complementary angles. MIT among others wanted me, but I went to Case Western Reserve University for computer engineering.
On question 14, I was surprised that you both only consider the positive square root when testing solutions. For me, sqrt(4)=-2 = 1-3, when taking the negative root. This seems just as valid as choosing the positive square root when checking that sqrt(36)=6=9-3.
@@samudrabane9667 If I ask what is the square root of positive four, your answer should be {-2 and +2}. Even when, as you say, the number *inside* the root symbol is positive, the roots themselves come in pairs. E.g., let's check if -2 is a square root of 4 (-2 x -2 = 4) ✓. And let's check if +2 is square root of 4 (2 x 2 = 4) ✓. Does that convince you?
@@gracenotes5379 well ive been told that the logic you are stating is incorrect. the exact reason, it was something to do with fundamentals theorem of algebra X=rt 4 shouldn't have 2 roots as it violates fundamental theorem of algebra. X^2= 4 has 2 solutions which are +- 2
How SAT scores work. They range from 200 to 800 per test. Mean score is ~500. Standard deviation is 100 points. So, someone who scored 800 on the SAT math was 3 standard deviations above the mean. Someone who scored 350 was 1.5 standard deviations below the mean.
What they are used for: The overwhelming majorty of test takers are in the 11th grade and using it as part of the college application process. (Some might be 10th or 12th graders). But there are other uses. Some of the "smart" 7th graders are given the SAT and if they get a good score are invited to take some enrichment classes over the summer at Duke University.
Another way the SAT is used: Here in Florida students need to pass a basic proficiency test in Algebra skills as a requirement to graduate from High School. (The "Algebra End of Course Exam" or the "Algebra EOC"). The Algebra EOC is only given a limited number of times while you are in high school. So for the students struggling with getting a passing score, they can also take the SAT. If their SAT Math score is high enough that counts as a passing Algebra EOC score.
I would be curious if Tom did a nzqa scholarship calculus paper. They are designed so that about 3% of the entire subject cohort get a scholarship and 0.4% get an outstanding award (but not everyone attempts the exam). Only the recent ones remain but 2005 is just insanity, where the outstanding mark only needed 47/120 total across 6 questions (although papers are typically out of 40 with 8 per question for a total of 5 questions.) However one problem is the exam takes 3 hours to complete (if you can) so the video could get too long or a few questions are to be attempted. I would be curious to see comments from him and perhaps get advice/reassurance for my 3rd attempt at this exam in November :)
I don’t know what modern A level maths includes but I passed mine 47 years ago. Ours was much more complicated than this with calculus, logarithmic equations, matrices and vectors to name some off the top of my head. You had to show all your working out because you could do everything correctly but make a stupid arithmetical error somewhere and end up with the wrong answer but would still get marks for the techniques used. As mentioned somewhere else the femur is your thigh bone and the longest bone in your body.
Oddly enough, one of the only real uses for feet per second is in measuring how fast bullets travel, which is one of the most American concepts I can think of.
I think some variation on "system of equations" is very much more commonly used than simultaneous equations across languages. But I didn't look into it.
Watch Tom take the SAT exam live here: ruclips.net/video/u0se7iWdNZw/видео.html
PEMDAS
Parentheses
Exponents
Multiply
Divide
Add
Subtract
Would love to see ACT and Math AP's.....I took both SAT and ACT. Went to school with someone who got a perfect 1600 on PSAT.
We call fillable forms = Scantrons
In old days, you got 200 pts just for writing your name!
SAT tests basic math skills, but exams are very long (including verbal), and grade boundaries are stringent so a slight loss in concentration will cost a lot of points. AP Calculus exams are similar to A-level maths.
SAT math test starts to test attention to detail under pressure more than anything else. It's a good test for surgeons, bad test for mathematicians.
And, it's really frustrating that it throws in all sorts of "gotcha" moments, where if you solve a problem in a way that is mostly valid, but miss something (i.e. factor something and one of the solutions is actually invalid but you're trying to answer quickly so you miss it), you get a 0 for that question, even though you actually understand and can apply the concept.
That's what I dislike about those tests.
They're also not good at catching people who are more talented. So, the ceiling is too low and based on the ability to maintain concentration under pressure, rather than one's ability to interpret and apply concepts, which is what actually gets you somewhere in math and physics.
@@hellomate639 their reasoning is that because the SAT needs to be impartial to disadvantaged students, i.e. ones who aren't exposed to higher level math which people in higher level classes have better experience, they test basic concepts in convoluted ways since that's just a personal skill thing rather than if you took that class before and understand that concept better
@@jimbermelon The thing is, disadvantaged students are at an even greater disadvantage.
There are so many basic patterns that aren't drilled enough in school that help tremendously with the SAT.
Namely, factorizing (which is taught, but perhaps underemphasized?), and adding/subtracting equations, especially applied cases of adding/subtracting equations. That's just not a very intuitive thing until someone shows you how it works and you get some practice.
@Opus 32 While I agree they try to call you out they didn't do a full length exam so that shouldn't be a factor. A full length exam is like 3 math sections and 2 English or something (Not sure since I got caught in the years where they had writing too)
@@hellomate639 A lot of students with ADHD and other stuff get extra time on the exam. Which isn't really helpful at all.
I'm in US, and way past school age, but I'm enjoying you guys - 2 smart guys from the UK talking about math as done in the US vs UK. Interesting
SAT math scores range from 200 to 800. Each version is scored slightly differently. On one version you might need to get all questions correct to get an 800 while on another version missing one will still give you a perfect score. Top US universities will want scores above 700 (roughly 50 out of 58 questions correct) and obviously the higher the better. Tech schools like MIT are even more selective.
In the state of Michigan all students take the SAT at the end of their junior year of high school (16 or 17 years old with one more year of high school before graduating). 530 and above is considered "college ready" which is defined as having a good chance of getting a C or higher in a first year college class. A 530 is getting half of the questions correct. In Michigan 70% of students do NOT meet this goal. The mean SAT score is 470 (22 questions correct). In several of the school districts closest to me the mean score is around a 400 (16 questions correct) which indicates that some students are doing worse than randomly guessing.
No, there is no consequence for "failing" the SAT. Students get the same high school diploma and if they go to college (most likely a community college -- a college that offers two year degrees and courses that transfer to a four year university) they take remedial math classes. In most cases I doubt they retain anything from those courses either.
Yes, scores on the verbal part of the SAT are equally dismal.
The mulitiple choice element does not allow for following a reasoning, and I can see some of the finding roots the error of putting ALL roots rather than just the 'real, or practical' roots would be done by some, so they know the method, not the reading of the actual question which is a common mistake of some clever people (I a thinking of BBT Leonard using wrong units on his explosive mixture). The rest I can see a lot of slog work of number moving
70% under 530 is abysmal. The first time I took them I got a 520 in math but I was 13.
The femur is the bone in the thigh - it's the strongest bone in the body and is used for approximating height in skeletons. The 'equivalent' arm bone is the humerus (upper arm - which is why when you hit your elbow it's said you've hit your funny bone). Lower leg bones are the tibia and fibula.
For the SAT, no school requires a perfect score. Typically 95% or higher will get you into any college you want provided your grades are good and you have extracurriculars. Another thing to point out is that on the real SAT, there are some questions that actually don't count towards your score when graded (they are testing new question styles and such) where if you get really lucky, that may end up being one that you miss!
ehhhh, couple of corrections
no schools require a perfect score, absolutely. Although a 780 is the bottom 25th percentile score at MIT and Caltech, meaning that ideally you would get perhaps 1-2 wrong max. Most schools are test optional though nowadays, so yeah, you're absolutely right in that grades and extracurriculars are far more important than the sat.
on the SAT, the test questions are in section 5, a completely separate section. they dont put new/different types of questions in the actual exam, that would be absurd, so a 57/58 is just a 57/58, depending on the curve, that could be anywhere from a 770 to an 800 in the math section.
source: took it a couple months back and am applying to colleges now
@@Planegod Why would it be absurd? It's pretty normal for standardized tests to have non-scoring experimental questions mixed in. It's a good way to gather data.
It's commonly believed that the (modern) SAT has moved all the experimental questions to "section 5", but they DON'T actually promise that. They just promise that section 5 will bring the total number of scored questions up to the correct total.
The manual says "Any section of the SAT may contain both operational and pretest items."
95% and good GPA & EC will get students into MANY colleges but certainly not “any”
There are people with 1600 that gets rejected by 1st tier (Ivies, MIT, Cal, Stanford)
@@Planegodno they use the new questions to see if they are fit to actually put on the exam later on.
When we did math here in Ontario Canada, the radical definitely implied +/- not just positive results. At least as I recall.
I'm a falconer, and peregrines absolutely do wait on at tremendous heights - a mile is not unreasonable at all. Their vision doesn't allow them to see things more zoomed in than we do, it's more like it's higher resolution. They'll see a duck or pigeon flying along and dive and it's just stunning.
When you have two linear equations in a system and they don't have a solution, all it means is that they are parallel lines, and they therefore have the same slope. Solve each equation for "y" and then you have it in slope-intercept form, where you can then just equate the slopes of each.
SAT scores are only one factor in college admissions, and how important it is depends on which college or university you apply to. But I think a single question being wrong on the entire SAT (assuming you got perfect scores on the other two subjects, English and writing) would be fine for almost any admissions 🙂
I'd be interested in seeing how you handle math AP exams; since you mentioned A-Levels are more specialized, that sounds more like our American AP (Advanced Placement) exams. They're in specific subjects, higher level than the standardized tests, and count for college credit while you're still in high school; but they require you to take an AP-level class to learn the material before the exam, so you have to specialize a bit while still in high school. They're scored 1-5, with 5 being the best. I took Calculus I, Calculus II, and Chemistry AP exams way back when I was in high school, and I remember them being more intense than the SATs.
Yeah would be much more interesting to watch them take AP Exams. The SATs are designed to not be very difficult and its more demonstrating a solid foundational knowledge in general math. Also I don't think there's an AP Calculus II?
@@brandon4375 There is. I think they were called Calculus AB and Calculus BC though for some reason. Or at least there was when I was in high school 13 years ago 😥
@@IceMetalPunk still called AB and BC. It used to be that “A” was precalculus, B was calc 1, and C was Calc 2, but they have dropped that conceit while keeping the course and exam names
I remember being terrified when I took my AP Lit test because I finished in like, 45 minutes for a 3 hour exam and knew I would be too stressed to make good revisions so I just took a nap. Got a 5.
@@BobertJoe Nobody cares. Write 100 times on the blackboard ‘it’s not about me’.
I have no idea how I got to the math side of youtube, but somehow I love it. It's so interesting.
Welcome... we have fun over here too!
30:15 I recall being told (back over a decade ago when I took these exams) that the questions are not necessessarily in increasing-difficulty order. And therefore a skill for test-taking is to quickly recognize harder questions, skipping them, and returning to them after you've completed a first pass. (Whether that skill is useful for anything other than timed test-taking is another question...)
Very interesting videos very entertaining. I was a high school student in 1966-67 and took these exams. I scored well in math but not close to perfect, i was 16 or 17 years old. I wanted to attend MIT but my application was never answered. I ended up at a state university, then was drafted into the Army. In time I completed the BS degree and used the GI BIll to fund a Masters at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. It worked out in the end but rough start. Today I am retired and playing with CAD, IOT and 3D Printing as my hobby. Great energy and personalities in the videos, Thank You. Dennis in Virginia
glad it has worked out for you!
Right triangle is a triangle with a "right" angle (i.e. 90 degrees). Well done gents
I highly recommend checking out the AP Calculus BC test. That's college level math taught at a high school level.
Q26, the pollen one. I’m no biologist but I do have a keen interest in palaeontology and it is indeed a recognised technique to take lake bed core samples and examine pollen counts to infer the quantity and distribution of plant species over the past, where other contemporary measurements are not available. Seems like a reasonable approach to me.
I like the fact that for question 12 Tom converted 0.6 into 3/5 because he "couldn't" divide 18 by 0.6 and somehow that's clever... where he could have just divided 180 by 6 to get 30. Which is a trick he uses later in the test anyway.
So you just converted 0.6 into 6/10 instead. Bigger numbers, slightly easier multiply because base 10, otherwise the same
Having taken this before, thanks for reminding me of their hilarious names like 'heart of algebra" and "passport to advanced math"! I can definitely say that missing one point on the math subscore will not dash Ben's hopes of getting into top schools. There probably is a score below which you'll be 'screened out' at Harvard and whatnot, but a point or two off from perfect should be very safe. Also, you can take it multiple times if you really didn't do well (and can afford the test fee), and you only have to send the best one to colleges. They'll care much more about your extracurriculars and teacher recs than a few points on the SAT, which certainly comes with its own set of issues, like an extracurriculars arms race among well-off students (some kids I've tutored say they feel they're doing way too many things just for the sake of their college applications) but at least it's a better system than letting one test make or break your future.
P.S.: I'd love to see you and Ben try the AMC, the first stage in the American IMO team qualification! It's 75 minutes for 25 multiple choice questions, with 18 or 19 correct usually being the cutoff for the next round
Good summary! According to the SAT site, you can choose which score (and the date) you want to send. BUT some schools may require scores from every time you took it. In almost all cases, students do better the second time they take it.
Amc 12 cutoff is more like 13-15/25
For people who have non-traditional academic backgrounds but are academically able, not counting standardized tests like the SAT is a huge and extremely unfair disadvantage. For a myriad of reasons, not everyone manages to assemble an impressive portfolio of achievements to woo colleges with; the vast majority of people don't even come close. But among those people are some very gifted individuals. A simple test takes a few hours, where extracurriculars etc can take hundreds. They should consider both, or either, but not just eliminate these types of standardized tests.
Even with the best SAT or ACT score; you can still be rejected from top colleges because of how competitive it is. Another thing about getting a good SAT or ACT score is you can get a very good financial scholarship that can give a person a full ride or close to a full ride scholarship to several colleges considering colleges in the US are ridiculously expensive.
If you have “the best” score, who are you competing against? The person with the second best score?
@@Macron87 People with better overall cumulative grades and people with strong extracurriculars. SAT is just one part of the application process.
Femur is your thigh bone. The tibia and fibia are both in your shin. Makes me think you guys should take a biology exam next 😜
Tibia and FIBULA, not fibia. Lol.
Was going to make the same comment. Leg is femur tibia and fibula, arm is humerus radius and ulna.
Nah. Arm is humerus. Forearm is radius/ulna. Upper limb refers to both. Likewise for lower limb with the thigh (femur) and leg (tibia/fibula). There are slight variations but this is the general nomenclature. Shin refers to the tibia and often the anteromedial surface.
@@chomalen The "thigh and leg"? Pretty sure "leg" includes the thigh and just means the entire lower limb between hip and foot.
@@IceMetalPunk in informal communication, yes, it is often used that way. Formally not. If you said someone fractured their leg in a medical setting, they'd assume it was somewhere between the knee and ankle and want clarification.
7:00 For Q5 I'm not sure if either Ben or Tom fully understood why -3x is not the right answer. Yes Ben is right that the square root symbol is defined as the positive square root. But if x0 given in the question means it must be 3x.
notnek - r u the guy from the gcse math tsr thread
you should do an IB maths AA HL paper. it would be really fun to see!
There’s also a level above that called further maths for people that want to do maths as a career.
@@muneeb-khan Hes already done that in another video.
@@RashidPandor19 I just see A-level and GCSE further maths. Don't see IBO.
^^^^
@@muneeb-khan further maths sadly doesn’t exist anymore (they got rid of it as a course and pretty much redid the entire math curriculum, sadly)
When I took the SAT as a high school student I missed one question on the math section - I know what it was because I realized that I had made a mistake right after the test was over. (I divided by a negative on an inequality and forgot to flip the inequality sign...28 years ago... but I'm not dwelling it or anything...) It's not scored in a linear way - missing one got me a score of 790 out of 800. In theory the mean is 500 and the standard deviation is 100, with scores ranging from 200 - 800. That's still a very, very good score, more than good enough to meet the test standard of any school in the US. That said, it's not enough to ensure admission anywhere, because a student's grades, recommendations, extracurricular activities, entry essays, etc are also factored in to admission. I almost certainly wouldn't have gotten into Harvard, for instance, because they've got tons of kids applying with extremely good test scores and basically ignore them as a result.
I mentioned this in another comment, but it's important to remember the intent and population that take this test as well. In much of the US, every single student takes this, regardless of their future plans. It's not the A-levels, and it's not intended to be. The original intent of the SAT was to design a test that could predict success in college, that's it.
You can definitely write on the exam for the SAT. You just have to fill in the bubble sheet too.
I had to think about this while listening to you, but I finally recalled that in the U.S., we call it the “slope” of the curve rather than the “gradient.”
I'm a parent of a high school student who is in the thick of college applications and testing. These days, SAT is used less than ACT as a measure. The higher the score, (usually) the more scholarship money is available from the school in the form of 'merit scholarships.' ACT or SAT score, along with GPA, combine to determine your level of merit scholarship - with some offering full ride scholarships for perfect scores. The more selective the school the higher your scores need to be to get merit scholarships, and highly selective schools (MIT for example) don't tend to offer merit scholarships at all since every student would qualify. Some highly selective schools will also be interested in subscores - so on ACT, for example, more weight may be given to the science and math subscores (the STEM score) than the overall composite score that includes reading and English. And even students with perfect SAT and ACT scores aren't admitted to some colleges - there may be some other factor that the schools are looking for to set students apart in a highly competitive academic environment.
Hi, you should check out the sat subject exams.
They usually had more interesting questions. Certain universities required these subject tests for certain science/engineering/math programs which required sat biology/physics/chemistry/math. I remember the math subject exams tested algebra, geometry, trig, and calc and it felt like a grind going through them especially when you had to take these back to back for the different subjects. They contained between 50-100 questions depending on the subject.
except they're no longer in use
Someone who works at an American college and previously the Admissions staff here! It very much depends on where you are going if SAT scores are significant indicators for admission. A lot of community/state colleges (2 or 4 year only institutions) do not care as much about such scores, and even offer different tests for students to take if they want a higher score or if it’s been a while since they were in high school. It is only an indicator of where to start you off with math and NOT an indicator for acceptance. Universities and Ivy League schools may use SAT as ONE indicator for acceptance, but a majority of the Universities (at least where I live and in my experience) will also look at what college credits you already have under your belt, things completed related to your declared major, GPA, etc etc. Universities honestly much prefer that you have your first 2 years already completed and then transfer to them to begin your major-related courses. I would say the biggest thing with SAT is that if you are going into a STEM field, it kind of dictates how many classes you will need to take (ex. If you score very low, you may need to take several math courses just to get to a regular College Algebra course, which could take a whole year to do) and may affect when you can take certain science courses (ex. At my college, students can’t take Human Anatomy and Physiology if they have not done their College Algebra. Same goes for certain Chemistry and Physics courses).
Hope this helps!
@57:00 When I was taking this for #33 I reasoned if the mean was 1600, I could chuck the 1600 from the set. Then 1200 and 2000 cancel out as they were 400 off the mean in either direction. This reduced it to the mean of 700 and x was 1600, so it had to be 1600 + 900 = 2500.
I used to teach students SAT prep (gave them strategies for studying for the math sections and we also covered a lot of the content that typicaply comes up.) I believe I've heard of the positive answer of the Sq root as the "principle root" and this is what kids are typically taught initially since negatives confuse kids early on. If you think about it, it makes sense that the Sq rt of 4 is 2 and also -2 because either one squared gets you 4.
A radical always implies the principal root. If the index of the radical is odd, the principal root is the ONLY real root for that radicand. For a radical with an even index root, the principal root is the nonnegative real root. It's not about kids being taught that to avoid confusing kids early on. It's literally how the radical symbol is defined. The radical gives ONE result. If you want to get BOTH real even index roots, you MUST include a plus or minus symbol in front of that radical.
There is a difference between being asked to evaluate the square root of 64 when given a square root radical and being asked to identify the square roots of 64, which would be both 8 and -8.
Tutoring I did for prep on the sat was mostly focused on gaming the multiple choice nature of the test.
Been about 15 years since I took the SAT, but from what I remember each wrong answer is about 10-20 points off, so you guys would be in the 780-800 range which is amazingly high and all other things considered, you'd stand a good chance at getting into an Ivy League. I think my score was about 700 on the math section which I remember being decently good so getting 780-800 is probably top 1 percentile.
Part 2 question #21 is actually very easy to solve without a calculator, if you simplify the equation. First, multiply both sides by 100 so that you're working with integers, then expand the rhs, and finally isolate the variables. You're left with 8x = 2y. Since you're given y and want x, solve for x in terms of y: x = y/4. It's not a stretch to imagine the problem's author(s) specifically chose 100 and 4 here because US students would be familiar with a 25 cent coin and a 100 cent $1 bill.
Please do any HL Math IB paper. That would be fun!!
Greetings from Greece! I have a small comment about Q 30. There is a theorem from geometry that states: "If one of the acute angles of o right angle triangle is thirty degrees then its opposite side is half the hypotenuse". So no trigonometry is needed. Angle A=30 degrees, by the aforementioned theorem, and then angle B=150 degrees (because A+B=180 degrees). The video was quite fun and informative though! Thanks!
Eyy! Congrats on winn- sorry not winning, after all it's not a competition :) love the format of grading it on camera!
So glad your a mathematician not a biologist. Femur is the thigh bone. the arm bones are the ulna, radius and the humerus
It shows everyone has blindspots! I would struggle on many of the maths questions, but something like that would be immediately knowable for me.
The femur bone is not in your arm, but in your thigh
30. In the U.S. I drill the relationship that a 30-60-90triangle has sidea of 1:sqrt3:2. This gives angle A at 30 degrees, and B is 150 by parallel lines.
Right-or, similarly, you could notice that angle theta is one angle from an equilateral triangle of side lengths equal to AB.
SATs have gotten easier in recent years (according to tutoring websites) and statistical averages. They have also cut the hours of the test down. They used to be up to 4 hours in length and now they are only 2 hours (for all sections total). This example is a much easier type of math test than the one I took to get into university. Others have mentioned, tests used to contain some pre/calculus. Also the students would typically need to take them age 15-16 if they plan to apply for university on time in their 10th or early 11th grade year. Age 17 or 18 would be too late, unless they are old for their grade. I took my SAT test age 15. Getting a perfect math score or missing only one question would be great, but you can't test only in math, the SAT requires you to test in all subjects and the total score is pointed up, so if you scored very low or not very well in the other test portion, this could damage your chances at attending a university of choice, even with a perfect math score. And, vice versa (a perfect score in the other portion, and a low score in math). Unlike A-levels, one cannot rely on achieving an A or A* in specific subjects and just pursue a degree/course in that subject at a US uni. You need to score well enough across the whole test to gain admission to a higher ranking uni. Lower ranked / less competitive unis won't care as much if your score is passable.
#26. By looking at the layers of sediment in the lake, you can find the history of the adjacent tree poulation, even when the trees are long gone. Also, you're looking for the growth of the population, not for the growrh (i.e diameter, height) of the tree.
Ah thank you for explaining :)
Arm is radius, ulna, humerus. Leg is tibia, fibula, femur.
biology is not our strong point clearly.
IB (AA HL) and (AA SL )
Do JEE Main and JEE Advance math problems it will be great to see you both take this as challenge this is university entrance exam in India for top tech/ engineering school admissions.
JEE Mains and advance are very easy exams.
About 19:09
In Sweden you first learn about systems of equations in terms of the intersection between two lines. So at least I think of this question in terms of finding the coefficient that makes the lines parallell (hence no intersection)
i think the top, top, schools like MIT there would actually be a difference, a noticeable one even if your high school grades, extracurricular activities, and interviews were exactly the same, the higher score would be more likely to be chosen. now most colleges if not all take other things into consideration, I, for example, got a 1100 on the SAT but was still accepted to Ohio State even though they recommend having at least a 1250. this was because of the much more difficult classes i was taking in high school, like AP calc in my sophomore year. also i could see how being in a shop class, having extracurricular activities, and having certification in the engineering industry, all in high school through battling some serious illness that caused me to be out of school 1/3 of all of high school. could help them in deciding who is worth letting in or not. thats why in American school its important to stand out, not just academically, because you can still be below average academically but still have a great work ethic and large colleges will pick that up.
Ft/sec was a common unit in the UK in the 1960's. I even remember the equivalent - 60 mph = 88 ft/sec.
As an american, getting just 1 problem wrong won't hurt you getting into a university (assuming you also did well on the english portion) except for the less then 1% acceptance rates universities. (this will be made a bit worse if you are going for a stem major) But you can still get into an amazing university, and the less then 1% acceptance rates universities are so competitive they might turn you away with a perfect score.
From the US, and I have the odd distinction of taking the rest twice, but with 4 years in between, and yhey completely changed the test between those two times. And I also tutor kids now, about 10 years later. I first took it in 8th grade. The math section was horrendous. I had never practiced (because you don't need to take it until you are going to college), and some of the math questions were more like puzzles. Like finding the patterns in numbers and saying what number would come next, and there was one type of problem that didn't really make any sense to me back then, amd it wasn't because of the math. I couldn't understand the directions. It was probably closer to a mix of today's SATs and a little bit of an IQ test. Then they added a written portion, and the math became more reasonable. Now the written portion is often by choice, and the math is even better. Most schools are VERY strict about SAT scores, so even if I got a kid's score up by a couple hundred points (the perfect SAT is a 1600 if they is no written version, which adds another 800), the parents demand more out of their child. If you miss one of the "trial questions," nothing is deleted. If you get a question wrong, they subtract .25 points. You get zero points for an unanswered question. You get 1 point for a correct one. So people can be scared to try a problem, because they are penalised for trying and not succeeding. Which is bullshit. While some schools are starting to back away from their dependence on the SAT scores for admittance, a lot of people who apply to Harvard with a perfect score and are valedictorians do not make it in.
I teach 4th grade in the US (9-10 year-olds) and they have to use those number grids with decimal points and fractions! If YOU find them confusing, imagine how they feel!
I thought it was interesting that Tom made a pretty significant mistake on 22 (at around 44:00) but that it didn't cost a point on the test. He put f(0) = 5 rather than f(0) = 30. If the question had asked how many guests were invited after 5 years, it would have given a possible answer of 80 as a distractor almost surely. Instead it just asked whether the function f(t) was inc/dec and linear or exponential.
Femur is the thigh bone
You guys go ahead and talk amongst yourselves. I could factor my way out of second grade
Next you should try the ACTs. While the SATs are more well known because they've been around longer, it's actually a 45/55 split among which test students use for applying to college/university here in the US.
While all colleges still look of course at your whole SAT, including the reading section, I've found that generally the top schools care a lot more about the math sections, which is lucky for this scenario as you guys only did the math section. I think it's kind of an unsaid thing in the world of American higher education that the math section is considered easier in a logical sense than reading, so a lot of the top colleges look most for almost perfect math section scores, while being more liberal with how they view the reading/writing portion of the SAT. Also, score-wise, each "section" is given a score between 200-800 (adding up to the total range of 400-1600 for the entire SAT, including reading), with the actual score being a multiple of 10.
You'll be hard-pressed to find someone at the top STEM-oriented schools, such as MIT and Caltech, who DIDN'T get at least a 780/800 on the math section. They would probably let a lower 720-780 on the reading section attend as long as the math score is essentially perfect. Nevertheless, the top schools have average SATs of roughly 1540-1580 (and provided that they follow the informal rule of expecting a near perfect math score, that would give the reading section roughly an average of 740-780).
Speaking on scores, the SAT is graded on a different curve every administration. While the total specifics of that have never been officially released to my knowledge, here's some anecdotes for you. I actually got exactly the math subscores that you got when I took the SAT a while back: two 15s and a 14. That was in result of me missing 2 questions total if I remember correctly, although I forget which sections they were. They gave me a 780/800 on the math section from that. However, a friend of mine who took it on another day also missed 2 questions and got a 790. An acquaintance of mine missed 2 and was still given the full 800/800 during another test session. While the curve won't vary that much, you can see how for different test-takers who basically missed the same exact things to be determined to be from the lower expectations of top colleges all the way to a perfect score.
As for why my test's curve screwed me over so much, I think it could have been because I registered for a late summer session, when a flood of both overconfident 11th-years and desperate 12th-years needing a score to put down for colleges all took it. (for context the SAT is typically taken in the spring of your 11th year, although some may take it earlier on in the fall/late summer of their 11th year, or put it off until the early months of their 12th year)
You also mentioned scholarships at one point. We have a private-ish/public national scholarship system known as the National Merit Scholarship. However, they don't actually consider your SAT, but your PSAT (Preliminary SAT, a similar yet completely separate and different test that is usually taken in the fall of your 11th year).While this is the only well-known scholarship that places emphasis on test scores/academics, it also heavily considers other extracurricular things such as clubs, sports, and leadership positions that students participate in. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of scholarships that having a high SAT score would be advantageous in.
Disagree with the verbal section being considered less important. You just see more 800 scores on math than you do 800 critical reading but it is still possible to get 800 verbal. Also depends on what you want to major in that determines focus on scores stem obviously will look at math score more closely, liberal arts/ humanities programs probably verbal is more important.
1540-1580? AFAIK no college is consistently averaging 1550+. And depending on major, I wouldn't agree that RW is more important, there's just a lot more people who can get perfect math sections. I consider myself much much better at reading than STEM, but I got a perfect math section on both the PSAT and SAT and a 740 and a 790 for reading. 800 readings are super rare. If someone tells me they got a 1570, I will automatically assume they lost all the points on reading.
@@cryptic2610 Several of my friends got perfect on math and reading (and when writing was introduced, that too), and what they all had in common is they were all very good at math (not so much at reading/ writing) and thus were able to treat nuanced reading/ writing questions in a very "right or wrong, what's the formula" way that is required for standardized tests. I think people who come to the SAT better at liberal arts than math are already a bit more set up to fail in that sense.
@@cmdtrigun I'm far better at writing than math, and I got a 1590. I guess there's a level of being focused on objectivity that is required, but if you don't understand what you're reading well, you're absolutely screwed.
As far as the answer sheet, the name is filled out with the same fill in the bubble procedure, just on the other side of the paper as the test answers. And yes it's entirely automated grading with a few fringe exceptions like machine failures
the highest you can get on math sections is 800. That's exceptional. More and more schools are not considering scores! Unfortunately, because my son did extremely well. Like 99.5% tile
honestly nowadays in america standardized scores don't matter as much as they used to.
Love you content sir ..i will also be trying to get into Oxford to study maths ,i hope i get you as my teacher
go get em
best of luck!
I got a 3 digit SAT score in high school and I still got my Masters. Lol. I’m old now. Close to my 40s.
All us computer students from the 70s know the powers of two up to 65535 at least. Always wanted to ask a 21st century mathematician what they think if Android calculators not being able to do a reciprocal!
That was quite interesting to watch 👍🏻💥
re: question 26: Archaeologists may have no other option than to count pollen to estimate plant growth. So yeah, it's realistic in that you'd want to do it with live trees to establish your model.
19:30 Here in the U.S., we learn that topic in 8th grade Math and Algebra 1. We do reinforce the topic in Pre-Calculus though.
That's true. When you have two linear equations in a system and they don't have a solution, all it means is that they are parallel lines, and they therefore have the same slope. We usually teach students to manipulate the equations into slope-intercept form and equate the slopes. Then solve for the unknown constant. This is not as advanced as they mentioned in the video.
They used to offer SAT Math Subject Tests for "math-focused" students. Taking a Level 2 Math Subject test would have be better!
I was amazed at how simple the questions were on this exam. I took the SATs back in either 1971 or 1972 and they weren't anywhere near this easy. And we didn't have calculators back then either. None of these really needed a calculator. A couple needed some long arithmetic, which were easy using pencil and paper once they got complicated enough to not be able to do them in my head. I only watched Tom's video for taking the tests, and felt he took longer doing fraction reductions instead of just doing the division right away. (or other arithmetic)
1:05:08 ur welcome
Ben was so hard on himself. It was a structure mistake not a math mistake. The structure of your equation is the most common area to drop marks.
Those answer sheets are usually called scantrons and yes they are always graded by machine
Except at my high school, where they continually gave us scantron exams and then made the religion class grade them. 🤷🏼♀️
Technically, scan-tron is a brand, and the SAT uses something different.
@@cryptic2610 I just generalize them all as scantrons it's easier
Amazing! Can you do SAT Subject Test Math Level 2? It would be amazing to hear you two talk and explain about the test.
HL Maths paper from Ireland’s Leaving Certificate would be great to see.
you got question 14 wrong. square root of 4 is plus minus 2, therefore -2 is a correct answer as well, making B the only valid answer
Missing one question on the math section of the SAT could result in a score in the top 1% of all test takers, and in the top 25% of students at the most selective universities in the United States.
So no big deal as long as you aren't an Asian.
At MIT/caltech, iirc 50th percentile is still an 800 lol
True. It’s such a difficult school to get into since a lot of the kids that apply have over 1550 SAT scores. You really have to stand out to get in.
I know this is 3 months old, but just for the record a peregrine falcon can see waaaaay further than a half a mile. Like a full mile minimum.
A lot of colleges don’t require SAT, including UC schools
I think the time limit would be an issue for me. Running into a few false starts, as one might, the stress levels could well be alarming. I'm not even very test anxious. Arguments can be made for and against this test design.
The fun thing is there are two standardized test in the USA that use different scoring systems. Would be interesting to see how this compares to the ACT.
right angles also shares etymology with rights as human rights and right hands
Hmm, I seem to remember this test used to have more geometry questions, like finding the area between several shapes for instance. It also used to have a few trigonometry questions and pre calculus questions.
Whenever I had an exam where I was allowed to use a calculator (never at university though - studied Math), I brought at least 2 calculators. Just in case someone else would need one
The square root symbol doesn't mean only give the positive answer. The quadratic formula has +- because you do that part twice, to find two separate intercepts of the equations because there's at least always two. That plus or minus means, addition AND subtraction.
But if an equation is f(x) = sqrt(2x) then for 0=sqrt(2x) there are 2 possible solutions.
Selective American Universities say they consider many factors in admission. SAT, or ACT scores are just one piece. They care about course grades, and the rigor of the school where the courses were taught. They consider extra curricular activities. And they have certain other standards which they do not reveal.
On the SAT math I took in Ohio, I scored a 780. I missed one question (a really dumb miss) about complementary angles.
MIT among others wanted me, but I went to Case Western Reserve University for computer engineering.
On question 14, I was surprised that you both only consider the positive square root when testing solutions. For me, sqrt(4)=-2 = 1-3, when taking the negative root. This seems just as valid as choosing the positive square root when checking that sqrt(36)=6=9-3.
I agree. I believe they were incorrect on this one.
You are wrong
When sq rt always the values inside the root is always positive
@@samudrabane9667 If I ask what is the square root of positive four, your answer should be {-2 and +2}. Even when, as you say, the number *inside* the root symbol is positive, the roots themselves come in pairs. E.g., let's check if -2 is a square root of 4 (-2 x -2 = 4) ✓. And let's check if +2 is square root of 4 (2 x 2 = 4) ✓. Does that convince you?
@@gracenotes5379 well ive been told that the logic you are stating is incorrect.
the exact reason, it was something to do with fundamentals theorem of algebra
X=rt 4 shouldn't have 2 roots as it violates fundamental theorem of algebra.
X^2= 4 has 2 solutions which are +- 2
The femur is the thigh bone. It is the longest and the strongest bone in the body. FYI...
This feels like primary school questions
Feet per second is perfect for me!
Your +/- about the root, in the beginning of the test it tells you all numbers are real numbers therefore -roots (imaginary numbers) are out.
How SAT scores work. They range from 200 to 800 per test. Mean score is ~500. Standard deviation is 100 points. So, someone who scored 800 on the SAT math was 3 standard deviations above the mean. Someone who scored 350 was 1.5 standard deviations below the mean.
What they are used for: The overwhelming majorty of test takers are in the 11th grade and using it as part of the college application process. (Some might be 10th or 12th graders). But there are other uses. Some of the "smart" 7th graders are given the SAT and if they get a good score are invited to take some enrichment classes over the summer at Duke University.
Another way the SAT is used: Here in Florida students need to pass a basic proficiency test in Algebra skills as a requirement to graduate from High School. (The "Algebra End of Course Exam" or the "Algebra EOC"). The Algebra EOC is only given a limited number of times while you are in high school. So for the students struggling with getting a passing score, they can also take the SAT. If their SAT Math score is high enough that counts as a passing Algebra EOC score.
I would be curious if Tom did a nzqa scholarship calculus paper. They are designed so that about 3% of the entire subject cohort get a scholarship and 0.4% get an outstanding award (but not everyone attempts the exam). Only the recent ones remain but 2005 is just insanity, where the outstanding mark only needed 47/120 total across 6 questions (although papers are typically out of 40 with 8 per question for a total of 5 questions.) However one problem is the exam takes 3 hours to complete (if you can) so the video could get too long or a few questions are to be attempted. I would be curious to see comments from him and perhaps get advice/reassurance for my 3rd attempt at this exam in November :)
Would like to see Ben do few Sudoku challenges with Simon from CtC
Do the GRE next!
The answer grid itself is ridiculous! 👍
I don’t know what modern A level maths includes but I passed mine 47 years ago. Ours was much more complicated than this with calculus, logarithmic equations, matrices and vectors to name some off the top of my head. You had to show all your working out because you could do everything correctly but make a stupid arithmetical error somewhere and end up with the wrong answer but would still get marks for the techniques used. As mentioned somewhere else the femur is your thigh bone and the longest bone in your body.
You should try the Irish Leaving Cert Higher Level Maths Paper
Oddly enough, one of the only real uses for feet per second is in measuring how fast bullets travel, which is one of the most American concepts I can think of.
I think some variation on "system of equations" is very much more commonly used than simultaneous equations across languages. But I didn't look into it.
The femur is your hip bone, not in your arm. Radius and ulna are your forearms
Feet per second is very real
It's not just real; it's deadly serious
...in that muzzle velocities are typically specified in FPS.
I think you should try a Extension 2 HSC Maths Exam!