On Saturday, March 1st, I took my very first full-length SAT. (Technically called the SAT Reasoning Test.) I thought that I had done okay on it, though it is a very long (and stressful) test, particularly once you get to around section 7 or 8 and your brain starts to say “Enough already!”

However, my scores came out this morning at 8 AM Eastern time (a time which I’ve been counting down to over the past few days in anticipation), and so here they are (note that all scores fall within the 200-800 range):

Critical Reading: 630 (85th percentile)
Math: 710 (95th percentile)
Writing: 670 (93rd percentile)
–>In the Writing category, I receive subscores for multiple choice questions (between 20-80) and the 25-minute essay (between 2-12), in which I got 68 and 8 respectively.

This adds up to a cumulative sum of 2010 for the test (on the 600-2400 scale), which is a pretty good score, although not as high as I was hoping. Except for math, the scores are somewhat below the average scores for some of the top colleges that I’m looking at, although they’re not too far off. I’ll have to decide later whether I want to give this test another shot or not in the fall.

I do have some more tests on the way. I’ll be taking the ACT exam on Saturday, April 12th, and then two SAT Subject Tests on Saturday, May 3rd. We’ll see how well I do on those…

Tags: colleges, Critical Reading, essay, math, Reasoning, SAT, scores, test, Writing

Now, I can’t call myself a very good Tetris player. Actually, I don’t call myself much of a game player at all, but there’s nothing wrong with trying out a game of Tetris every now and then to see how good your reflexes are, and then to get you depressed at how horrible your reflexes are. The downside of Tetris is that it’s hard to find a good game of Tetris out there for OS X that doesn’t cost money. And maybe that’s because the best game of Tetris that doesn’t cost money isn’t Tetris at all.

Meet Quinn. It’s played exactly the same way and with all the same rules as Tetris, but it’s not Tetris, mostly to avoid trademark violation. And now I’ve typed Tetris in this post nine times. I’m probably in trouble. Nevertheless, Quinn is a really nice Tetris-style game application with a really nice user interface. It also includes many additional features, including “Tournament” (for playing with two players at a time), and network play, which allows you to play with any other Quinn user on your Bonjour network. Quinn also includes a number of piece styles and backgrounds, and you can download more. And Quinn has an online highscores database which you can submit your scores to once you lose your game.

Oh, and did I mention Quinn is absolutely FREE???

If you’re looking for a really nice application to play a game of Tetris, either by yourself or with a friend, check out Quinn, and kiss all of your productivity goodbye.

Final Rating:

Tags: games, Mac, review, scores, Software, Tetris