Changes to the SAT: How Will It All Shake Out?

Today’s ninth graders will be in the hot seat to take the revised SAT come March 2016. The College Board announced last week the following changes:

1. the essay will be revised and  once required, now will be optional
2. overall scores return to 1600 from 2400
3. no penalties for guessing
4. no more arcane vocabulary words, like adumbrate

The SAT was last revised in 2005 when the writing section, worth 800 points and included a 25-minute essay was added. The new section changed the total score one could obtain from 1600 to 2400.

Almost immediately, the essay kicked up a storm. It received criticism from educators, parents, and students alike who said not only that there wasn’t enough time to answer the prompt, but that it did not evaluate the kind of writing skills necessary to succeed in college.

The readers, high school teachers and college professors trained by the College Board, are given just two minutes to read and grade an essay based on an established rubric. Readers are instructed to grade holistically and not penalize for factual errors or incorrect assertions. Another words, have no fear if you write that the War of 1812 was in 1856, or that Truman Capote wrote, The Scarlet Letter. Create a quote for JFK, make up a work of literature, toss in some fancy words like “tenacious” or “myopic” and you are cooking with gas.

With today’s competitive obsession to get into elite colleges and universities, it didn’t take long for students to figure out how to game the essay. Unlike college papers that require critical thinking and analysis, the current SAT essay gives high scores for these components: introduction with thesis statement, two to three supporting paragraphs with examples, a sprinkle of nice vocabulary words, maybe a quote, and a nice conclusion that repeats the thesis and wraps everything up neatly.  Hold on -- there’s one more thing. Length matters.

In 2005, Les Perelman, then the director for undergraduate writing at M.I.T., was an early critic of the essay, “The SAT essay is a completely artificial and unnatural piece of writing.” Being from M.I.T. where numbers are king, Perelman demonstrated that length, more than any other component, correlated with a high score. Those who filled both pages were more likely to receive 10’s, 11’s, and 12’s.

In this new shinier model due out in March 2016, students will have 50 minutes to complete an essay that asks for analysis of a reading passage. Students will be asked to critique and explain how an author builds his or her argument. Reading passages will likely come from historical periods. What’s that sound, you ask? It’s just students knocking down the doors to get into the AP Social Studies classes (APUSH).

Long the reigning czar of the college admissions world, the SAT has been trampled by the lesser known ACT. In 2012, the number of students who took the ACT surpassed the SAT. Fearing that the ACT could take over the market, the College Board made the decision to revise the 88-year old SAT (although they might dispute it).

The SAT and ACT overlap in their mission, but differ in content and style. The word is that the ACT closely mirrors high school academics and measures achievement, while the SAT is a test of aptitude and thinking skills. It’s no secret that students have despised the SAT for its clever tricks and for asking questions rarely asked in high-school courses. On the other hand, the ACT content feels more familiar and very few gripe at the optional essay question because the prompt focuses on school-related issues.

So how will this all shake out? In the end --- performance on standardized tests will continue to be a decisive component in how students get accepted into college. There are only so many seats and the number of students applying to college has been increasing steadily each year – worldwide.

Students are quick to acknowledge feeling the pressure to keep a high GPA, take every AP course, score well on the SAT or ACT (or both) while maintaining an astonishingly rigorous extracurricular resume. So now that the SAT essay is optional, these same students are going to choose to opt out of it? They’re sighing with relief because they have less work to do? Not likely.

The hardest part about college is getting in. In most instances, colleges pick you, you do not pick them. Unlike TLC’s, “Say Yes to the Dress,” this is not “Say Yes to the College.” Despite your best efforts, you can still be turned away from the school of your choice -- due solely on sheer volume of the applicants.

Let’s not overlook the other variables that impact acceptance into your dream school. Variables such as sex, ethnicity, race, legacy, and demographics come into play. The student who lives on a dairy farm in Iowa is not critiqued as harshly as the all-AP student from Manhasset or Great Neck or Port Washington. While the dairy farmer may be the only one is his or her high school applying to Cornell, for example, many are applying from these well-known communities. There are quotas for geographic locations.

The new SAT essay will be optional as of March 2016. Students jockeying to get into competitive institutions are going to pass up an opportunity to get an edge on their classmates? That’s an easy one to answer. Students already know what they need to do – buy a practice book and prepare. If necessary, seek help from teachers, other students, online services (Kahn Academy is excellent), and private and/or public prep courses. Certainly it takes hard work, vigilance and dedication. These are the same qualities that will carry you through a lifetime.

Dr. Kathy Levinson is psychologist, publisher, and editor. For more information visit her site at www.wordtantrum.com.