Bell Curves Blog

Paging John Nash, paging John Nash...

This past week ETS finally got around to releasing the scores from the first three months of testing for the Revised GRE. For those of you who may remember, or may not, ETS released its new and improved version of the GRE on August 1st, 2011. A couple of us here at Bell Curves went in to take it to see just how “revised” the test was (naturally, we blogged about it, which you can read here and here). The objective was to find out anything about the test we could that was not in the press releases. We played with the algorithm in a few ways to give us better insight into the test scoring and other features. After a long grueling wait we finally got our scores back. Now we just have to figure out what they mean. As does just about everyone else…

No matter what test you take (SSAT, ISEE, SHSAT, PSAT, PLAN, SAT, ACT, etc) when you are preparing, your best friend is the wrong answer, if you use it as an opportunity to learn. This is the first in a series of tips on using fallacious answers to help you in your studies and on test day.

To properly take advantage of the wrong answers, you have to first understand that there are different types of wrong answers. The Loving the Wrong Answer series will discuss the major types of wrong answers, and how to use them to help you become a better test-taker.

If you thought grading SAT essays was easy, in part 3 of our report on the October 1, 2011 SAT, (part 1 is here and part 2 here) we’re asking you to grade an actual essay submitted on the October 1, 2011 SAT. This essay was written by me and was mostly done to test a theory and have some fun..

I wrote this essay to test what happens if you got a few (ok every fact) facts wrong during the essay.  So in case you were wondering I’ll post the score the essay actually got after we get some votes in!  So leave a comment below!

Over the last few years the recession has increased the concerns of the affordability and value of college. With the growing concern over the impending changes to government aid programs (such as Pell Grants and subsidized student loans)

http://studentaid.ed.gov/about/announcements/recent-changes

Sporting a manpurse

When I first heard “stanine” I thought: “Oh, that poor lady. Did they name her after some guy named Stan?” It turns out it’s not a person, but a system for standardizing test scores. This makes more sense and is less upsetting than thinking some woman has gone through life saying “No, not Janine, Stanine.”

But turns out it’s actually pronounced “Stay-Nine” since it squishes the original title of the process called Standard Nine into one word (like romance and brother make bromance, murse = man + purse, friend and enemy make frenemy, giant + enormous = ginormous). Stanine is a way to explain test scores using just a single number from 1 to 9. The important part to keep in mind is that this isn’t the actual score, as in how many questions you got right or wrong, but instead it’s a way to see how your test score compares with everyone else who took the test.

Is this an SAT Passage author?

In part 2 of our report on the October 1, 2011 SAT, (part 1 is here) we’ve decided to answer the question, “From where do they get those crazy stories?”

If you’re like us, you’ve wondered where they dredged up the reading passages they use on the SAT. Were they some crazy 100-year-old professors of Shakespearean literature creating these passages? Or perhaps they hired some psychologist — one who specializes in torturing teenagers — to design these new unique ways to get under your skin. In truth, the passages are works of literature that have been written and published, typically, in the last century. Some have come from the hallowed halls of academia and some have come from popular culture (one test featured Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club).

So the first SAT of the 2011 – 2012 academic year has come and gone and as usual it was full of words ranging from the commonplace (longevity) to the esoteric (recondite). We sent in our teachers to check it out and here are some of the words we remember. We’ve taken words from the reading passages as well as the Sentence Completions. Keep in mind that the SAT doesn’t simply tests random words, it tests words that are used in “well-written college level texts.”

Recently, we thought that many people out there battling through the business school application process might benefit from some thoughts and insights from others who went through the experience. To that end, we present On the Record: Q&A with BC Alums. Over the next few months we’ll be sharing stories in Q&A format from some of our favorite Bell Curves alumni.

Today’s featured Bell Curves alumnus is Radina Russell.

BC favorite and all-around superstar Radina Russell

Radina graduated from Columbia Business School and now works as an Investor Relations and Financial Communications consultant. Here is what she has to say about her business school experience, the GMAT, and more:

On Thursday, September 15th, GMAC held the latest installment of its every-other-year Test Prep Summit. At the summit GMAC updates the test prep industry on the GMAT and business school. Bell Curves was happy to be in attendance, and the event was chock-full of info pertinent to anyone planning to apply to business school in the next year. Below is a blow-by-blow of the biggest news from the summit.

Image by Zillafag

In this installment of our new (and ongoing) series of study tips, we bring more cognitive neuroscience (Ooooh! SAT vocabulary makes everything sound big and fancy, but cognitive neuroscience simply means the study of how we think) to bear with distributed learning.