New SAT Makes It Harder To Be Perfect
The essay requirement added to the revised SAT Reasoning Test has caused the number of students acing the test to plummet, the New York Times reports.
In 2005, over 1,000 students achieved a perfect 1600 SAT score, having scored 800 on both the math and verbal sections of the old SAT I.
This year, fewer than 250 students achieved a perfect 2400 on the revised version of the exam.
The essay seems to have made the difference between a perfect score and a near-miss in many close-but-not-quite-there cases. Just over 4,100 test-takers got a perfect 12 on the written essay -- and, evidently, only a small number of those students also scored 800s on the math and reading sections.
According to the NYT, a College Board analysis of high-scoring essays found that:
- Longer is better. Essays longer than one page were more likely to receive high scores than shorter essays were.
- Longhand is better. Essays written in longhand (cursive script) were more likely to receive high scores than printed essays were. (We suspect that this might be more a reflection of the 'longer is better' tendency than an independent factor, since it's easier to fill paper quickly when you're writing longhand than it is when you're printing.)
- Third-person is better. Essays written from the third-person perspective ('she,' 'he,' 'they,' 'one') were somewhat more likely to receive high scores than those written from the first-person perspective ('I' or 'we') were.
Source: "Perfect's New Profile, Warts and All," by Tamar Lewin. The New York Times, September 3, 2006
In 2005, over 1,000 students achieved a perfect 1600 SAT score, having scored 800 on both the math and verbal sections of the old SAT I.
This year, fewer than 250 students achieved a perfect 2400 on the revised version of the exam.
The essay seems to have made the difference between a perfect score and a near-miss in many close-but-not-quite-there cases. Just over 4,100 test-takers got a perfect 12 on the written essay -- and, evidently, only a small number of those students also scored 800s on the math and reading sections.
According to the NYT, a College Board analysis of high-scoring essays found that:
- Longer is better. Essays longer than one page were more likely to receive high scores than shorter essays were.
- Longhand is better. Essays written in longhand (cursive script) were more likely to receive high scores than printed essays were. (We suspect that this might be more a reflection of the 'longer is better' tendency than an independent factor, since it's easier to fill paper quickly when you're writing longhand than it is when you're printing.)
- Third-person is better. Essays written from the third-person perspective ('she,' 'he,' 'they,' 'one') were somewhat more likely to receive high scores than those written from the first-person perspective ('I' or 'we') were.
Source: "Perfect's New Profile, Warts and All," by Tamar Lewin. The New York Times, September 3, 2006
posted by AllStarEssays at 12:21 PM
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