This isn't the time or place to have a professional pissing contest, but I can't let KarenWs charge go unanswered.

KW said "I used to teach an SAT prep class. Although the school claimed that they had "secret" information about how to score well on the SAT, they really didn't."

Well, maybe she didn't teach a very good class. But here's just one of the hundreds of "secrets" that SOME test-prep firms teach, and that others do not -- judge for yourselves:

Virtually every SAT since the dawn of time has had at least one problem on Pythagorean triplets in right triangles. A typical high-school math curriculum will have taught its students both the Pythagorean formula (a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared, where a and b are lengths of right-triangle legs and c is hypotenuse length) and how to solve algebraically such formulae given two of the values.

What they probably WON'T have taught their students is that the SAT almost never actually requires the use of that formula per se, and that test-takers who do use that fomula are almost certainly disadvantaging themselves.

See, here's the problem: the SAT, like most other standardized entrance exams, is what they call a "highly speeded" exam. That means that it is designed with the presumption that the vast majority of students cannot and will not finish some (or all) of the sections within the alloted time. So it's not a matter merely of getting the "right" answer ("right" in quotes because in the verbal side there are not objectively "right" and "wrong," but only "best" and "not-best," answers). It's also a matter of getting the "right" answer in the FASTEST possible time.

Therefore, students who know NOT to use the Pythagorean Formula, but rather to expect that ANY right triangle that shows up on the SAT is almost certainly one of six SPECIFIC right triangles (3:4:5; 5:12:13; 7:24:25; 8:15:17; 1:1:radical-2; and 1:radical-3:2) or integer multiples thereof -- that can be solved almost instantly (and usually in the head, w/almost no arithmetic calculation) by recognizing and completing the three-way ratio, rather than by solving the Pythagorean formula... such students will have a significant advantage over students who THINK they're being tested on the Pythagorean formula.

To give credit where it's due, ETS has been -- glacially -- moving in the direction of making the SAT less trick-ridden, and thus less amenable to coaching by such trickery.

But the problem with ANY "standardized" test is -- there will ALWAYS be SOME "tricks;" it's inherent in the naure of making the exams "standardized" -- ie, replicable across different test administrations. So ANY "standardized test" will always admit of at least some degree of coachability -- and thus will preference students with the means to buy such coacing in the open market.

I'm sorry I brought it up.

This is just one of many posts, articles, news stories, etc, on how it's gotten tougher to get into top schools / any schools -- the demand has increased; a growing population of high school graduates is chasing a static number of college slots; etcetc.

But why is this? Why are the top school not responding to the increase in high-quality applicants with an increase in class sizes? Why are they not taking advantage of the opportunity to grow their institutions? With larger numbers of highly-qualified applicants, this could easily be done with no loss of calibre -- and it's not as if there aren't thousands or tens of thousands of under-employed and highly-qualified scholars from whom to select in increasing faculty sizes as well.

In any other field, an increase in demand would be immediately responded to with an increase in supply. So what's so special about higher education that the laws of supply and demand should have been repealed? Why are elite universities -- or colleges at all levels -- not doubling and tripling in size? Anyone out there know?

I love how all these people know the inner thoughts and feelings -- and what they REALLY mean when they say "x," but actually mean "y" -- of people they have never met, and whom they have only read about at second hand.

Can all you psychics tell what I'm thinking of YOU right now? Gosh -- I'll bet you're right!

...for many of us, it's not even primarily the war, as important as that is.

As I'm sure other posters before me have said, and probably better than I (post first, read later; apologies to everyone who said it earlier and better), it's that LIEberman can be relied upon to be found supporting Republican themes, memes, talking points -- the whole megillah -- over Democratic ones.

He's provided huge levels of support for the entire enterprise of corporatocracy, kleptocracy, and nascent theocracy with which we've been saddled for 5+ years now, and made it that much harder for any progressive messages to break thru the media cloud of obfuscation.

If the claims that "Democrats are in disarray," that we "have no new ideas," that "we're just out to bring down a good President" who "is just fighting to keep us safe" have found any fertile ground in voters' minds, it's partly because of the shit that LIEberman's been spewing for the entire period.

It's time for him to go.