This Isn’t Your Parent’s SAT Test
In the spring of 2005, the College Entrance Examination Board unveiled a new and much-anticipated edition of the SAT Test. The first and only major overhaul for the college admissions gatekeeper in nearly 80-years - since it was introduced on June 23, 1926. The now, three-section test, examines college bound students’ abilities in math, critical reading and essay writing - offering a top score of 2,400.
Less obvious revisions to the test have also been incorporated to better evaluate a student’s readiness for higher education. The College Board, a group of 4,300 educational institutions-including most of America’s leading universities, wants high school students to be better writers, with a better grasp on grammar, and a better understanding of advanced-math - such as Algebra II. All of this will increase the testing time from three-hours to three-hours and 45-minutes.
Many believe that the goal of the new test is as much to influence high school curriculums as it is to help colleges predict how well applicants will do if they are admitted. This two-part objective, to improve high schools and still remain useful to colleges as a predictor, is something that Board President Gaston Caperton III believes the new SAT can accomplish.
For decades, the purpose of the test has been to try to measure students’ general-reasoning abilities, but the new test will examine their specific knowledge of algebra and the extent to which they have written practice essays. The SAT has dropped word analogies in favor of short sentences that require students to select the best choices for filling in the blanks and also eliminated the math items that ask you to compare two complex quantities. More broadly, the SAT has evolved from a test of general reasoning abilities into a test of what kids learn in school. Students interested in taking a practice test can visit
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/prep_one/prep_one.html.
The College Board has also offered the following suggestions for taking the new test:
1) Answer easy questions first.
You earn just as many points for easy questions as you do for hard questions. The easier questions are at the beginning of the section and the harder questions at the end-except for Critical Reading questions, which are ordered according to the logic and organization of each passage.
2) Guess smart.
If you can rule out one or more answer choices for a multiple-choice question as definitely wrong, your chances of guessing the right answer improve. For math questions without answer choices, fill in your best guess; no points are subtracted for wrong answers.
3) Omit questions that you really have no idea how to answer.
But if you can rule out any choice, you probably should guess from among the remaining choices.
4) Don’t panic if you cannot answer every question.
You do not have to answer every question correctly to get a good score. You can get an average score by answering about half of the questions correctly and omitting the remaining questions.
5) Use your test book for scratch work.
You can also cross off choices you know are wrong and mark questions you have omitted so you can go back to them if you have time.
6) Keep track of time.
If you finish a section before time is called, check your answers in that section only.