SAT Analogies

~ Clarissa

Here’s an example of SAT analogies:

1. DRIP : GUSH
CRY : LAUGH
CURL : ROLL
STREAM : TRIBUTARY
DENT : DESTROY
BEND : ANGLE


2. WALK : LEGS
GLEAM : EYES
CHEW : MOUTH
DRESS : HEM
COVER : BOOK
GRIND : NOSE


3. ENFRANCHISE : SLAVERY
EQUATION : MATHEMATICS
LIBERATE : CONFINE
BONDAGE : SUBJUGATION
APPEASEMENT : UNREASONABLE
ANATOMY : PHYSIOLOGY


4. UNION JACK : VEXILLOLOGY
TOAD : ORNITHOLOGY
TURTLE : MICROBIOLOGY
GYMNOSPERMS : BOTANY
FRIEND : HOME ECONOMICS
ALGAE : ZOOLOGY

I love this kind of exercise with a fiery passion. It’s sad that it’s gone, and it’s sad that the whole concept of the SATs is fading away.

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Published by Clarissa

27 thoughts on “SAT Analogies”

  1. “it’s sad that the whole concept of the SATs is fading away.”
    “Yes, but Clawissa, you must wemember that those types of tests were vewy pwoblematic: they were sistemically wacist and tainted with White supwematism!”

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    1. I will never get over the extraordinarily open nature of the racism that makes people suggest African Americans are doomed to suck at these tests. Also, this goes against all real evidence which shows that whites aren’t particularly good at these tests. Asians blow whites out of the water on them every time.

      This isn’t addressed at you, of course. I know you are parodying these incredible wusses.

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  2. I am just baffled that the SAT is going away. Even though I’ve spent 46 years in this culture and understand exactly why it’s still going away, it’s still baffling. The left LOVES Europe. Europe is utopia, where there’s no capitalism, just social safety nets and regulated companies. (In their telling.)

    Yet European universities rely on exam scores of various sorts.

    The left is convinced that people of color are wiser.

    Yet universities rely on exams for admission in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, Pacific island states, and presumably Greenland.

    The left talks all day long about how biased we all are when we evaluate people.

    And then they ask us to base admissions on essays, or resumes full of extracurricular activities.

    The whole thing makes no damn sense to me.

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    1. IMO it’s because their kids are reverting to the mean, and they’re afraid of their own anesthetized, unmotivated children having to compete with the smarter, quicker, more ambitious offspring of immigrants and the lower classes.

      It’s possible to cheat on the tests, but there’s a higher risk of getting caught. Essays and extracurriculars, though– they are easily purchased.

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      1. People can bitch forever about how Asians buy high test results with tutoring but the truth is they tend to be extremely engaged parents. At every event around town, every kids’ activity, I see the same Asian families. And it’s always mom, dad and the kids. And then, gosh, why are they doing so well? It must be some evil trick. Well, maybe the trick is to have parents who spend time with you and who have a good, strong marriage.

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        1. Ya think? Among the immigrants my family knew when I was growing up, it was not uncommon for the oldest kid to graduate high school, and then the whole family– parents, siblings, grandma, everybody– to just pack up and move to the college town where that kid would be going to uni.

          But sure, blame it on “cheating”.

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            2. “exactly my plan for when Klara goes to college!”

              Might work if you don’t live together… in more traditional American culture college is less about education per se and more about separation from the parents and examining different kinds of life possibilities (hard to do if mom is picking you up from class….).

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        2. Exactly. Tutoring for Asian kids is just one piece of a much larger package. The tutoring helps, but it helps most because many other things in their lives support what the tutoring is there to accomplish, and the tutoring supports things that many other elements of their family lives are also trying to accomplish.

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          1. Part of that larger package is a culture where you are not just doing this for yourself. It’s a family effort. You’re a representative of your family, you’re doing this so you can be a contributing member of your family, and you are going to ultimately get married and add to that family.

            Contrast that with regular middle-class white people where it’s all about self-fulfillment and vague notions of “happiness” and your continued contact with your family after 18 is entirely a function of whether you have nice feelings about your family and are “friends” with them… and forming a family of your own is strictly a personal choice.

            Difference in results there is extremely predictable.

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            1. I’ve noticed that middle-class Americans feel extreme shame when their children move back home during college or between college and nursing or graduate school. I mean, they actually want to be around you at that age. How is it bad?

              Or another hangup. “She’s too serious with this boyfriend. She’s so young. She should just date around some more!” Buddy, she’s 29. This is really not too young to quit the dating game and start settling down.

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  3. Even though I have spent 46 years in this culture and know what the objections to the SAT are, I still don’t get it on some level.

    Liberals say we should be like Europe, which is supposedly a paradise of social democracy. Yet just about every European country bases admissions on tests of various sorts. Whether subject-specific tests like the British A-levels or more general tests or whatever, just about every European country bases admissions on tests.

    And I know that race is a factor here, but counties that aren’t dominated by white people also mostly use tests of various sorts. Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, and presumably Greenland, they all use tests of various sorts.

    And they go on about how we’re all biased, so biased, and then say that we should base admissions on essays, resumes of extracurricular activities, and high school grades given by teachers who know the students. Yeah, no way bias will creep into how any of those things get evaluated.

    I just don’t get it.

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    1. At least when I took it back in the 1980s, the SAT, unlike most European tests, didn’t test on a body of knowledge we were supposed to have learned. For example, the math portion had questions that were much easier than what I was doing in school, but the time limit on it was so short that it was only possible to do well by memorizing 3-4-5 and 5-12-13 right triangles and similar test-taking tricks that were mostly useless outside of a timed test.

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      1. This is relevant. From what I understand, the rest of the world’s “entrance exams” test for subject mastery, breadth of reading, actual achievement, that sort of thing, where the SAT is largely an IQ test in drag. If they’re watering down even that… it does beg the question what they’re even testing for.

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        1. America’s tradition of decentralization means we resist the idea of nationwide curricular standards. Since everyone will have studied different books, focused on different topics, etc., an IQ test in drag is pretty much all we can have.

          The AP tests are a way around that, but I am quite sure that those will eventually be targeted as well. We already see people circumventing AP with “dual enrollment”, where a class is taught in a high school but allegedly with some involvement/supervision from a local college, so they get college credit. Which sounds great, except for all the grade inflation opportunities. An AP test is not perfect, but at least everyone is held to the same imperfect standard, rather than whatever standard the grade inflation pressures of the high school and college might require.

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          1. That’s unfortunate. I did my entire 12th grade year as a dual-enrolled student– on the college campus, with college professors, for every class. I didn’t realize that had been extended to highschool-campus AP classes.

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    2. The system of competitive examinations mostly originates in China. Westerners have been complaining that it doesn’t result in politically correct outcomes ever since it was introduced.

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    3. The real answer is that they hate the SATs precisely because this test is not biased. They want to be biased in a way that the choose at any given time, and removing the objective evaluation measures will allow that to happen.

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  4. My friend sat the college entrance exams in Vietnam. She is smart, ambitious, and wanted to go for a degree in mathematics.

    Her score was docked because she is Catholic, and it is simply not permitted for Catholics to score better than the children of good atheist party members. She got an MBA instead– those aren’t as high-prestige, so it is allowed for non-approved religious to go into that program.

    This is what we are shooting for in the US right now. Who wants this?

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    1. My father wasn’t accepted to college on the first try because there was a policy of keeping the Jews out in the USSR. It was considered that there are too many Jews in higher ed, and yes, Jews disproportionately sought higher education and were successful in their studies.

      So yes, there are many historical examples of this kind of policy. Strangely, they all come from totalitarian regimes.

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      1. It’s one of the reasons why historically, we’ve gotten such amazing immigrants– they know that they can do better here because America doesn’t do that.

        That’s not something we should be trying to change!

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    2. “Her score was docked…. She got an MBA instead”

      Not sure what I think about that, in most countries an MBA is a lot better choice than abstruse mathematical theory… on the other hand it seems (from what I know of Vietnamese in Poland some years ago) it’s almost a nothing degree since Vietnamese seem to be born with a basic knowledge of how to do business….

      “Who wants this?”

      The same way that leftists reflexively side with criminals instead of victims of crime they reflexively support anything that seems destructive to the current social order….
      Since most modern leftists are actually neoliberal (in that they believe core tenants like the value of destruction of existing structures for the sake of destruction and the non-existence of human variability or dignity they also support it for that reason. How fitting, they cackle that the person who tests at 140 IQ (by privilege!) should be stocking shelves at a supermarket while the person who tests at 95 (through hard work and effort! and the power system lowering their scores!) should be creating policy….

      Like the alchemists or communists before them they are immune to counter-evidence.

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      1. It really did seem unnecessary. She and her husband run a handful of businesses now, but I’m pretty sure the degree wasn’t necessary.

        “destructive to the current social order”

        Cultural arsonists.

        That’s gonna get ugly when there’s no longer anybody around who knows how a step-down transformer works, and how to install one.

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