The College Board is about to implement a new version of the SAT. Before your stress levels reach unhealthy heights, take a breath and find out exactly what's changing.
Some Perspective
The SAT has evolved since its introduction in 1926, with the most recent round of changes coming in 1994. The College Board pursued the upcoming changes so that the test would better reflect the material being taught in high schools. The changes will also help college admissions officials make better decisions and reinforce the importance of writing skills.
Updates to the math and verbal sections, plus a new writing component will alter the SAT experience. But much of the new material is drawn from the College Board's SAT II writing and math tests, which many students were required to take anyway. So students facing the new test aren't "doing more than anyone else had to do, they're just doing it in a different place," says Ian Simpson, the owner and president of Integrated Learning, a Los Angeles-based tutoring company.
While the writing section is a new component of the SAT, it's not an entirely new test. "It's almost exactly what the SAT II writing test is," says William Sullivan, an SAT tutor in Colorado Springs, Colo., who runs the SAT Lowdown. "We already know how to approach this kind of test."
Who's Affected?
These changes primarily affect the class of 2006 (high school students entering their junior year in the fall of 2004). They took a new PSAT in October of 2004 and will encounter the new SAT in March of 2005.
One unique dilemma facing the class of 2006 is whether or not to take the old SAT before it goes away. Some students feel they're likely to get a higher score on the old version, and some colleges have indicated that they'll accept scores from both the old and new test during the transition. However, some colleges (most notably the University of California) will only accept scores from the new SAT from the class of 2006.
What's New
Writing
The new SAT will include a 60-minute writing section designed to test student's knowledge of grammar, usage and word choice. Students will answer multiple choice questions for 35 minutes. These questions will ask students to recognize errors and recommend the improvements to sentences and paragraphs. During the remaining 25 minutes students will write an essay.
See examples:
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/newsat/writing.html
Verbal
The name of the verbal section will change to the critical reading section and analogies will be eliminated.
Short reading and comprehension passages will be added during the 70 minute section. The long passages and sentence-completion questions remain on the test.
See examples:
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/newsat/reading.html
Math
The math segment remains 70 minutes long and quantitative comparison questions will be dropped. The topics covered in this section will be expanded to cover exponential growth, absolute value and functional notation.
See examples:
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/newsat/math.html
Scoring
For each of the three sections students can receive a score between 200 and 800. Each essay will be scored by two readers, trained high school and college teachers, who will assign a score from 1 to 6. Essays will be rated based on the overall impression they leave. This means students can still receive a good score even with some spelling and grammatical errors.
How to Prepare
A number of materials, from free guides to online courses, are available on the College Board's Web site.
Plus, the same exercises that prepared students for the old SAT can help students get ready for the new SAT. Students should continue to read regularly and challenge themselves in math courses.
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