Oooh, Jessica, I got Buffy's score too! But without the perfect-score-getting classmates to make me feel shitty about it. I bare my teeth and hiss warningly at yours. Fsssssss!

Buffy never actually mentioned what the exact breakdown was, did she? I always figured that it was close to mine but maybe with a slightly lower verbal (due to her reliance on slang and non-SAT-approvable neologisms) and slightly higher math (due to all her intensive night courses in life or death problem-solving, including learning to calculate distances, proportions and velocities in milliseconds with deadly accuracy).

But, really,

I firmly blieve the SAT's are a test if how well you test

Sophia is so completely, absurdly right. I spent so many hours of my childhood happily working my way through puzzle books that multiple-choice tests have never seemed like anything but a game. Blue books, essays, a chalkboard covered with unfinished equations without a single hint as to their solutions, all scared the crap out of me. Multiple choice? A game.

Which was actually very much no fun by the time I got to high school, because I'd score 100% on all the district and statewide aptitude tests in math, and every time I did a previously warm and sympathetic math teacher would decide that the test-me was real and the classroom-me must be just engaging in malingering and diva tears and was no longer to be tolerated (God, yes, I cried in math class, frequently; math made me cry anywhere and everywhere, except on multiple-choice aptitude tests).

What was the scoring change? I graduated high school in '85, so I predate it.

They recentered the scores. The way the test was originally designed, 500 was supposed to be average, but scores had been dropping (probably because more people were taking it), so they changed the method of how they went from "X questions right, Y questions wrong, Z questions blank" to the final numerical score. So essentially, the same answer sheet would get a higher score. From what I recall, the way it worked, the biggest change was for people who would have scored in the 400s who, with the new score, got into the 500s. Scores toward the high and low ends of the spectrum didn't change as much.

Wow, all kinda SAT and GRE talk! Madness.

My sister just took the GRE. I told her she would surely score well, because if there's one thing kids in our family can do well, it's take standardized test. Do well in school? Eh. Do well in life? Maybe. But standardized tests? We kick their asses. (Which is to say, I don't remember my exact SAT scores, but they were good. And my GRE scores were good enough that my friend Nick had slightly worse ones, and when he went to his grad school for the first time, someone met him and was like "OH! You're the one with the amazing GRE score!")

P-C, I hope you realize that all of us clamouring for you to notice our new tags is a sign of great love and affection.

P-C, it's because I love you that I do not change my tag.

I'm just hoping I don't prevent him from becoming the Canadian of his dreams!

I love this.

Yeah, but why would you start out from an already fallen position?

Because you're a crazy krav person like ita?

Congratulations on the Miniana, Nonian!

ERIN!!! ERIN ONLINE! WHOOT!!!

I have done well on multiple choice tests on subjects about which I know nothing. I just do well on multiple choice tests. Unfortunately, while life is frequently a multiple choice test, the skills don't transfer.

Unfortunately, while life is frequently a multiple choice test, the skills don't transfer

This is totally my feeling, Ginger--if all of life were like the SAT or the GRE, I'd be totally set. Sadly, it's not.

P-C, it's because I love you that I do not change my tag.

Thank you, meara. I'm tired enough as it is. A combination of jet lag and my bizarre sleeping schedule in India. And I need to write an article, but I'm so zonked. Also fill out the FAFSA. And start researching. I hope I don't fall asleep during Veronica Mars.

I have done well on multiple choice tests on subjects about which I know nothing.

Me, too! I remember figuring out the difference between heterozygous and homozygous based on what I knew about homesexuals and heterosexuals. Also, multiple choice tests seem to follow a pattern similar to the pattern of the Jeopardy "answers" for which I can often guess the correct "question" based on the phrasing.

I have done well on multiple choice tests on subjects about which I know nothing. I just do well on multiple choice tests.

Me too. I got a 5 on the biology AP exam. There's no way that I could have gotten a decent grade in a college intro biology class with the amount of knowledge I had; I just memorized everything I could from the review book and worked through the choices logically.

Everyone above me was posting these incredibly high scores, and I started to think... huh.

Everyone here is wicked smaht. But no one else is married to Tom, so I take my comfort in that. I was smart enough to get that dude cooking for me every night and every morning. For life!

But no one else is married to Tom, so I take my comfort in that. I was smart enough to get that dude cooking for me every night and every morning. For life!

It's a shame there's no market out there that would let me trade my SAT scores for a Tom.