

What Was on the First SAT? - danso
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Document-Deep-Dive-What-Was-on-the-First-SAT-202748151.html

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pcrh
For comparison, the link below [1] is for the Harvard Entrance Exam in 1899.
"Write only as much as you can revise carefully."

[1]
[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvarde...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf)

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rotskoff
I'm sure in due time we'll find that many of the questions asked today are as
inane and conditional as the ability to distinguish between cuts of beef and
cow organs.

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derleth
> the ability to distinguish between cuts of beef and cow organs.

This sounds like basic biology to me.

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greiskul
Cuts of beef? There is more than one way of doing it, it's completely
cultural.

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andrewljohnson
That is only vaguely true.

There are some cuts that vary culture to culture (like Americans leave a lot
of meat on ribs compared to Europeans), but in general cuts derive from the
musculature of the animal and the various boundaries between the muscles. It's
pretty obvious to all cultures what the "breast" of a bird is, because the
meat all has the same texture.

Cuts mostly derive from nature in the same way mathematical formulas do.

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aasarava
It's only obvious to cultures that eat meat. I grew up vegetarian in a Hindu
family (in the US). Until late college, I would not have been able to tell you
how filet mignon, sirloin, chuck, rib differed -- or even what animal they
referred to.

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gnu8
That viewer is almost as terrible as Scribd. Does anyone have a link to the
document itself?

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unclenoriega
<http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/681564/1926-sat.pdf>

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alexvr
Always wondered what it was like.

At first, looking at the more rote-recall-based verbal section, I thought it
didn't live up to the conception that it was an IQ test. But the math section
didn't look easy, especially without a calculator, and I imagine that test-
takers of the day didn't prepare like they do today, so the unfamiliar format
of the test was probably part of the selection process.

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abecedarius
The math problems appear designed to be workable in your head, fitting the
3-answers-per-minute target: divisions come out as whole numbers, and in the
last one with the scary occurrence of pi you don't need to use it (it cancels
out -- and I like that, with the time constraint you need to be thinking on
your feet). I also like that it's not multiple-choice.

(But we're only seeing the first page of each section; I'll bet it gets
harder.)

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danso
In case you don't see DocumentCloud's fullscreen button, here it is so you
don't have to sidescroll on the test:

[http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/681564-1926-sat.html#...](http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/681564-1926-sat.html#document/p1)

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edit: The info on the test composition is pretty interesting, and telling
about how we protect our students from feeling like failures.

[http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/681564-1926-sat.html#...](http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/681564-1926-sat.html#document/p1/a98696)

> _Students had 97 minutes to answer a total of 315 questions on nine sub-
> tests..."You had to answer about three questions per minute," says O'Reilly.
> "The expectation was that nobody would finish the whole test."... Today,
> students have three hours and 45 minutes to tackle 170 questions and an
> essay on 10 sections..."Now, you have a little over a minute per question,"
> says O'Reilly. "We are aiming for 80 percent of students getting to the end
> of the test."_

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svachalek
It also somewhat changes the nature of the test. Under the original rules, you
just had to be good at some subset of the skills/knowledge that were tested.
Now you have to be good at pretty much everything on it to get a good score.

I can imagine if it was this way now it would be a lot like a MMORPG. There
would be online forums griping that math students are OP and they nerfed
chemistry this year.

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drorweiss
Very nice, thanks for sharing

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lurker14
Interesting that it has a Linguistics section, as in the International
Linguistics Olympiad, but not seen on a modern SAT or high school classroom.
<http://www.ioling.org/problems/samples/>

I suppose that morphed in to the "logic puzzles" found on the modern LSAT.

