NYC-Feature Story

Putting the Essay
Into the SAT

By Megan Cohen

Starting in March, say goodbye to the old SAT, and say hello to possibly the biggest change to the test since high school students first took it in 1926.

For decades the SAT has consisted of a math and a verbal section, each scored out of 800 points, for a cumulative total of 1600 points. No longer.

There will still be a math section, but with a twist. Quantitative comparisons (questions where you're given two quantities, like 5² and 20, and you have to decide which is greater) have been taken away. Also, you're now expected to know three years' worth of high school math, instead of two. New topics include analyzing slopes of x-y graphs, and properties of tangents.

And the verbal section? Gone. It's now called "critical reading" and the analogies (where you have to figure out the relationship between a pair of words) have been replaced by short reading passages. This means even more boring pieces about things like whether ESP is an actual science.

Why All These Changes?

But the most drastic change is the addition of the writing section. They've added a dreaded essay, which you're given merely 25 minutes to write. Not only has this section made the unbearable three-hour test longer (now three hours, 45 minutes), but it's changed a perfect score from a 1600 to 2400.

For a few years, at least, it will be difficult to get a feel for what a strong score really is. An average score in the old SAT was about 1000, so you could decide what to aim for based on that. Now that the overall score has changed, and an average score doesn't exist yet, I don't even know what to aim for.

Why are all of these changes being made? You can thank the University of California. It's the biggest customer of the test, and was dissatisfied with the old format. According to a study group put together by the College Board, the organization that creates and administers the SAT, half of college freshmen aren't able to write at the college level.

Testing on What's Taught in School

The University of California hopes to change this. The new test reflects the University's push to have better writers coming out of high school. The test changes are also an attempt to better align the SAT with what's actually taught in high school.

Historically, the SAT has been a reasoning test, testing knowledge that's not necessarily learned in school. It was made to measure potential, and wasn't meant to be something you could prepare for ahead of time. But with the addition of the writing section, and more reading instead of analogies, the SAT will test kids on what they're supposed to be learning in school.

College admission offices will have access to the new SAT essay. They can be sure that this essay, unlike the college application essay, hasn't been doctored by people other than the applicant.

I Tried Out the New Essay

I took the PSAT in October. It was in the new SAT style, but it didn't include the new SAT essay. The College Board says it's not feasible to find enough readers to evaluate more than 2.5 million PSAT essays. But isn't the PSAT considered the practice test for the SAT?

Luckily, I was able to try out the new essay more recently. Princeton Review offered a

limited-time practice service allowing you to write a sample SAT essay online. They'd grade it and send it back electronically. I decided to try it, and, not surprisingly, given the short amount of time I had to write it, I didn't do too well.

The essay topic was "Do possessions and education define you?" I was given two quotes as a prompt, one of which was from the movie Fight Club- "The things you own end up owning you." I had enough trouble deciding what I thought about the topic, and even more trouble trying to think up examples that applied to it.

Ticking Clock and Writer's Block

Do possessions and education define me? How should I know? The test instructions said to support my thesis with historical examples, personal observations, and things I've read. I started picturing myself in situations from the past that I could maybe use as a "personal observation."

Thinking about my education, I kept imagining myself sitting in school. The more I thought about it, the more I imagined myself sitting at a desk in class with writer's block. Maybe that was because I was sitting in front of a computer trying to write an essay-with writer's block. Five minutes wasted.

I figured that possessions and education do define people to an extent. People who finish high school make more money than those who don't, for example. That extra money could alter a lifestyle completely.

But then again, maybe possessions and education don't define people. What about those who don't have money or a good education but wind up being successful? I told myself I had to get going already.

There Go Another 10 Minutes

At last I decided which side of the argument I'd take. Possessions and education affect who you become, because they either do or do not provide opportunity for you. In that sense they define you.

But what personal observations did I have? Even more difficult, what examples were there in history? Well, there's a reason slaves were denied an education. Slave owners were able to keep slaves back by not allowing them to learn to read or write. Great, now 10 minutes were gone.

And why couldn't I think of any names and dates? Maybe I didn't need exact details, but I felt like my slave example was too vague. The pressure of trying to think of things to write about, how to phrase those things, and the logical flow of the essay built up until I was left with 10 minutes to actually write.

I didn't have enough time. I did manage to write a full essay, but it was really vague. The introduction and the conclusion were only about one sentence each, and the body was about 15 sentences at most.

I got an average score-6 out of 12. But if I'd had even another 10 to 20 minutes, I'm sure I could've written a much more well-composed essay.

Will Scoring Be More Subjective?

I learned my lesson, though. I would've been better off coming into the test with a few prepared examples of historical events. Other sample questions I've seen on the College Board website are, "What's your view on the idea that it takes failure to achieve success?" and "Do people need to keep secrets or is secrecy harmful?" It seems like one can expect the topic to be so broad that you can use almost any example.

But I'm not happy about the new SAT. How can they expect to judge how well you'll do in college by an essay you wrote in 25 minutes? This might favor people who can just throw something together over those who can write well but prefer to think their argument through first. Under that time pressure, it seems like the essay section is more about completing five paragraphs than really thinking things out.

I worry that the scoring of the test will now be more subjective. Before, all the answers were either right or wrong. But essays fall into that gray area where answers aren't necessarily right or wrong.

The essay will be read by two graders who don't know the test taker's identity. Each will give a score from one to six. If the two graders' scores differ by more than a point, a scoring director will score the essay.

Feeling Like a Guinea Pig

The old SAT has often been accused of being unfair because some groups do better than others. Historically, the wealthier and more socially privileged a student is, the better their scores are-meaning that poorer students don't do as well as wealthier students, who go to better schools or can afford SAT prep courses.

Also, as a group, white students do best on the SAT, possibly because they tend to have the best educational opportunities. And males tend to do better than females-researchers think this may be because males are more likely to guess. (On the SAT it's better to guess than to leave answers blank if you can eliminate one choice).

The College Board has been trying to make the test fairer by doing things like adding more reading passages about minorities. But will the same groups still do better on the new SATs?

We'll find out soon. I feel like a guinea pig being one of the first to take the new test. My class (2006) has pulled the short straw. We're being handed a brand new test we haven't been thoroughly prepared for. For those of us who aren't good writers, we won't have much opportunity to get better in time for the SAT.

I Need Those Extra Minutes

Although some may be happy that analogies and quantitative comparisons are gone, I'm dreading writing the essay. When I write an essay for a test in school I get 45 minutes to complete it. I need those extra 20 minutes to come up with an argument-the hardest part of essay-writing for me. When I have more time, I feel a lot more comfortable and more confident.

Since the SAT essays are supposed to be graded for overall quality-not just grammar and spelling-I'm not sure what I'm being graded on. Just my ideas and whether or not I can transition from one to another smoothly?

On its website, the College Board says that the new SAT will "reinforce the importance of writing throughout a student's life." I don't see how. It's a rare day that anything of importance is written in 25 minutes.