Help disadvantaged students ace the SAT!

Katie Hanna '09 writes:

Looking for a great way to give back to the greater community? Wesleyan's Let's Get Ready college prep program is looking for coaches! SAT Coaches volunteer for one or two nights a week to help students in low-income areas get into college.

Let's Get Ready expands access to college in America by mobilizing, equipping, and empowering a movement of college students helping high school students get to college. Through a network of campus and community-based chapters, Let's Get Ready's trained college student volunteers provide disadvantaged students with intensive SAT preparation, college advising, and the powerfully relevant role-models and mentors they need to succeed.

As an SAT Coach with Let's Get Ready, you will teach math and/or critical reading and writing SAT prep. LGR will provide you with training and curricula. You will guide small groups of high school students through the college process you recently completed. Most importantly, you will become a role model and integral part of many high school students' academic and personal lives.

This is a volunteer position, but work-study compensation is available to eligible students.

• Fill out an application
• Learn more about Let's Get Ready
• Send your questions via email

Study shows : Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance

Apparently there's a correlation between the ratio of the length of your ring finger to your index finger, and how well you perform on the math compared to the critical reading section on the SAT.

LiveScience.com reports,

A quick look at the lengths of children's index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims.

Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.

Scientists have known that different levels of the hormone testosterone and estrogen in the womb account for the different finger lengths, which are a reflection of areas of the brain that are more highly developed than others, said psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, who led the study.

Of course, the same measure of finger length also correlates with the level of aggression in men and various other cognitive functions, since it's really just used as a measure of how much testosterone versus estrogen you were exposed to in the womb. Still, kinda cool, right?

Death Rattle of the SAT?

Recent babbles going on in the collegiate world about dropping the SAT as an admissions requirement. At Bates College, they've discovered that the SAT basically means nothing at all. From Inside Higher Ed:

In the years since, Bates has continued to study the data — collecting SAT scores on students who are admitted, so that the college can analyze trends involving those who do and do not submit scores for admissions reviews. Students who don’t submit scores tend to have math and verbal combined SAT scores that are 140 to 160 points below the average for those who do submit. But Mitchell said that the difference in the two groups’ grade-point average while at Bates is 0.05 — hardly anything at all.

Iiiiinteresting.