this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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I just found out this weekend the the algebraic (super easy) shortcut to divide an integer by a fraction that I showed my son - was referred to as ‘cheating’ by the teacher, who said the people who grade the SATs would mark him down for that.
I’m actually quite confused about that.
Ha! I worked in Test Prep and College Admissions consultation for nearly a decade at a fairly prestigious company in a major city with major private schools (major money and major lineage/legacy) and unless there have been major changes to the SAT/ACT since the pandemic that teacher is completely full of shit. There isn't even a guessing penalty anymore on the SAT let alone any way for them to know how a student comes to the answers they choose. You don't have to even turn in your work when you turn in the test.
Sounds like the teacher felt stupid or threatened or both and made up nonsense to combat their own failing. And honestly, I would consider giving bad advice that could impact a student's future malpractice. That was actually the standard for teaching algebra when I was in school so a teacher telling your kid it is cheating is beyond confusing. It's borderline abusive and at the very least completely incompetent.
There's no guessing penalty? If they don't offer 20 options or eliminate multiple choice in favor of exact answers, this seems dumb.
So, all colleges started accepting the ACT or the SAT without preference about 2 decades ago and what happened was the ACT never had a guessing penalty so a lot of students started shifting to the ACT in favor of the SAT to the point that the SAT had to change their test to be more like ACT to continue to compete in the marketplace with them. And "compete" might even be misleading because they were still very popular and still the standard but they made the change to avoid losing their stranglehold on the market is probably the more accurate way to describe it.
Crazy that there isn't a consistent standard for assessment and they can compete on preference based on ease rather than rigor. That's just another race to the bottom, wonderful.
Eh. The previous SAT wasn't even necessarily harder or easier. They cover about 90% of the same subjects and material. They just emphasizes different things at different rates. Some students actually did better on one versus the other based on their particular brand of aptitude not the aptitude itself. But the punitive scoring was bad PR for a test that essentially covered the same material but didn't have a guessing penalty. People didn't necessarily do better on the ACT because of the guessing penalty not being part of it.
Yeah, I guess I just dislike multiple choice overall. Real knowledge doesn't involve guessing; and solutions for these tests, for someone who actually knows the material, can be resolved in seconds per question. I don't like the idea of someone who knows how to solve but makes a small mistake being penalized the same as someone who entirely guesses... So in that regard it's better not to have the penalty.