SAT’s Reality TV Essay Stumps Some

Every year, the SAT reduces more than a few teenage test-takers to tears.

But few questions on the so-called Big Test appear to have provoked more anxious chatter — at least in this era of texting and online comment streams and discussion threads — than an essay prompt in some versions of the SAT administered last Saturday in which students were asked to opine on reality television.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/education/17sat.html

It wasn't asking specific details about reality TV. You could easily answer the question even if you had never seen an episode of reality tv in your entire life. It was using reality TV as a foundation to ask a larger question (can inauthentic portrayals of 'reality' be harmful to society as a whole?).

Even if you don't watch this type of programming, you'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard of it.

Plus further down in the article it states:
"For example, the questions are preceded by an explanatory statement — “These shows depict ordinary people competing in everything from singing and dancing to losing weight, or just living their everyday lives” — as well as an assertion: “Most people believe that the reality these shows portray is authentic, but they are being misled.'"

The question gives you everything you'd need. It's about reality vs fantasy.

high school senior), I know there are kids who've never seen these shows. She has a friend whose family doesn't own a tv. That friend has been accepted into Columbia.

However, the kind of kid who doesn't watch television has more than likely taken extensive SAT prep classes and knows all the strategies for doing well on the essay regardless of topic. By the time these kids are juniors or seniors, they've had plenty of practice writing essays. No excuse for not being able to b.s. their way through just because the topic happens to be pop culture. Besides, the SAT is offered multiple times. No one has to take it just once. Much ado about nothing.

There is a delusion that is used on people. No matter what you do, there are some things that try to make it seem like you scored lower, or not as well as you should have. That is a delusion to create despair. And much of the concepts of life as a 'test' that is incorrect.


If you ever feel that someone is trying to get you to think you did not do well enough in life or some task, they might be trying to point your direction on what you think you should feel is important.

And we all know getting me the beer and travel money that is due is what is important :D


If not scoring well on someones 'test' bothers you, watch this episode of OuterLimits, it reverses that doctrine.



Outer Limits, Human Trials.
http://www.fancast.com/tv/The-Outer-Limits/4643/1103247671/Human-Trials/videos


Side note, the episode the second part is taken from is really good. It explains those that think people are monsters, or see some people as monsters. It is a really good episode.