
Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board - daegloe
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/education/major-changes-in-sat-announced-by-college-board.html?hp&_r=0
======
chimeracoder
This sounds nice, but I'm not holding my breath for hope that the "new" SAT
will be any better.

I took both the "old" SAT (the one that they discontinued around 2004) and the
"new" SAT (the one that they're now discontinuing). I actually thought that
the structure old one was better in many ways - for example, the analogies
were often terribly _written_ , but the idea of testing analogies as a
reasoning tool is very powerful, and much more so than just doing passage
after passage of reading comprehension.

Furthermore, this is the _exact_ same language that they used to justify the
decision to change the SAT 10 years ago. Coleman isn't saying anything new
when he's criticizing the SAT today; he's just recycling the same PR language
that they used a decade ago.

Of course, perhaps they really are genuine. I'd love to be pleasantly
surprised. But reading this gives me total deja vu from the news stories I
remember reading in 2002.

~~~
jonnathanson
Analogies are legitimate tests of reasoning ability. As I recall, however, the
analogies of the "old" old test often relied on obscure words. This turned
them into de facto vocabulary tests, defeating their purpose as pure
assessments of reasoning. At the very least, vocabulary became a confounding
variable in assessing the specific aptitude that analogies were meant to
assess.

One could make a strong argument for plain-English analogies, absent the $10
words. If every test taker understood most of the words, then we could test
for reasoning ability on a more normalized basis.

That's not to say testing vocabulary is totally invalid. Opinions vary. But if
we assume vocabulary is worth testing, then we should test it independently.

~~~
Workaphobia
I always assumed analogies were explicitly designed as a mechanism for testing
vocabulary, not reasoning. I don't understand how analogies would have any
value in testing reasoning skills. I can't imagine an analogy question that
isn't either obvious or subjective.

~~~
minor_nitwit
why not both?

~~~
Zhenya
when you test for both, its tougher to get a good measure on either.

------
spicyj
At Khan Academy, we're really excited to work with the College Board to
provide awesome, free test prep to everyone. We're putting huge emphasis on
really learning the material instead of practicing test-taking skills that
won't be useful afterwards.

Here's a little more about the partnership if you're interested:

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/05/khan-academy-gets-major-
par...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/05/khan-academy-gets-major-partnership-
to-close-rich-advantage-in-college-test-prep/)

~~~
67726e
"Instead of teaching to the test we're going to put huge emphasis on really
learning the material instead of practicing test-taking skills that won't be
useful afterwards."

Now how do we get the schools to actually do that?

~~~
_delirium
Changing the incentives would be a start. If you give schools very specific
metrics, and then judge them on how well they optimize those metrics for the
least money, it's no surprise that they are going to... try to find the most
direct way of optimizing those metrics. In fact, the ones who don't do that
will be penalized!

~~~
eli_gottlieb
"Beware your metrics, for they will improve."

------
xanados
I do not envy the College Board. We are in a social and political environment
where many issues that bear directly on the test are things you can't discuss
in polite company (e.g. whether IQ is a real and relevant phenomenon, the 0.8
correlation between IQ tests and the SAT, the correlation between IQ and
socioeconomic status). This makes it extremely difficult to both optimize for
their goals, and to communicate that to the involved parties. Because of this
it's hard to even know what their true goals are and whether they are actually
going to achieve them.

------
shitlord
I think these changes are long overdue. To me, the CR portion of the SAT
seemed incredibly biased against people from other cultures. Not only was
there a language barrier, but also there was the problem of allusions. Many of
the passages contained references to things that you wouldn't expect a typical
immigrant to know (things like Greek mythology, the indulgences of the
wealthy, cultural icons, etc).

I think the waivers for low-income students are also pretty great. When I was
in high school, taking all of the standardized exams cost me hundreds of
dollars. I went to school in a place with a lot of gentrification, so a lot of
my classmates could barely afford to get their high school transcript (let
alone pay to take tests). There were many efforts to get the school system to
subsidize standardized exams, but they were all unsuccessful.

~~~
fiatmoney
These tests are for admission to an American college / university. Basic
knowledge of Western culture is immensely useful if you're going to be in such
an environment, both for studies and for social purposes.

~~~
shitlord
Yes, basic knowledge is useful even if you aren't going to college. But the
problem is that the tests reference arcane parts of western culture that an
immigrant wouldn't be reasonably expected to know. My parents are both
immigrants and I was born in the US (I have lived here my entire life), and I
_still_ had a hard time understanding some of the allusions in the CR portion.
They aren't references to popular culture; they are references to an insular
culture.

~~~
WalterBright
The only question I recall from my SAT required knowledge of the recipes for
various alcoholic drinks. I thought that was a bit unfair as I was well below
drinking age, so why would I know that stuff? I'm sure I got that one wrong.

------
chroem
Am I the only one here that's bothered by a further narrowing of the expected
knowledge of students? A good engineer or programmer isn't a human calculator
who can bang out hundreds of caclulations per minute or recite petty facts in
a very specific area. Good programmers and engineers draw on their wide
breadth of knowledge, and the deep understanding it generates, to solve
complex and abstract problems.

Anecdotally, I'm seeing a substantial number, if not the majority, of CS
students who can't code worth a damn, but got into the department solely
because they did well in a small number of unrelated subjects.

While I'm not terribly concerned with the changes in the SAT, I am concerned
about it adding more momentum to this trend.

~~~
anigbrowl
No. I was also depressed about the approach of 'we're excluding arcane words!'
I do really well on those tests - not because I have encountered every word
that might come up, but because I do have a big enough vocabulary to draw
analogies and guess at the meaning of arcane words by looking at their
internal structure, eg Membranous seems to consist of membrane + _ous_ , so I
guess it's an adjective to describe something that has a membrane-like
quality.

I developed a love of etymology from spending many long hours poring over
dictionaries as a child, including the bits about word roots and so on. When I
see that things like this are being dropped from the SAT, it's like being told
that that knowledge and the effort to acquire it lacks value.

~~~
anigbrowl
TepidSolarSoul, your account seems to be banned so I can't reply to your
comment directly.

I certainly agree that 'maudlin' is harder to figure out etymologically, but
on the other hand I don't think it's all that unusual either; one would
certainly have come across it if one had read any amount of literature from
the late 19th/early 20th century, whether than was something by Dickens or a
bunch of Sherlock Holmes stories.

I personally think the fact that everyday vocabularies are shrinking is a
terribly bad thing, and a trend we should be resisting rather than
accommodating.

I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth or as the offspring of
professional educators, incidentally - indeed they went through a phase of
trying to discourage me from reading material that was too advanced or adult-
themed. My parents read to me when I was small, my mother enjoyed crosswords,
but the main thing they did for me was tell me to go look up a word in the
dictionary rather than supplying a definition whenever it was asked for. I
enjoyed reading enough to find the dictionary an interest in thing to browse
in its own right.

 _Better keep opening Old Nassau 's gates to the upper echelons of society for
anybody who can ace this sort of trivia._

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but I'm not holding my breath for
an invitation from Princeton.

------
rayiner
> For many students, Mr. Coleman said, the tests are mysterious and “filled
> with unproductive anxiety.” Nor, he acknowledged, do they inspire much
> respect from classroom teachers: only 20 percent, he said, see the college-
> admissions tests as a fair measure of the work their students have done in
> school.

What is really interesting to me is that while the rhetoric against the SAT
(and similar tests like the MCAT and LSAT), have increased over the last few
decades, in practice the tests are more important than ever. In the last 30-40
years, median scores at the top 10-15 schools are up about 100 points adjusted
for recentering in 1995. In practice, SAT scores are almost entirely
determinative for college admissions. High schools pump out so many 4.0+
students, that 100-200 point differences on the SAT dominate differences in
admissions outcomes.

And apparently, even companies are asking people for their SAT scores these
days: [http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-bain-
mckinsey-j...](http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-bain-mckinsey-job-
candidates-sat-
scores-2014-3?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29).
Without taking a position on either side, I have to wonder why the rhetoric
and the practice are so out of step on this issue.

~~~
saraid216
Higher population numbers would account for both effects, no?

~~~
rayiner
To a degree. In 1976, someone at both medians at Yale would have a 1410 on the
1996 scale.[1] In 2013, that was a 1510. I can't find percentile charts from
back then, but I believe the distribution has stayed roughly the same, which
means that Yale has gone from a median score in the top 4% to one in the top
1%.[2] In 1976, about a million people took the SAT, so a top 4% score was a
pool of about 40,000 potential students. In 2013, about 1.7 million people
took the SAT, so a top 1% score was a pool of about 17,000 potential students.

So population growth explains part of it, and much of the rest can probably be
explained by improved financial aid causing applications at Yale to go up by a
higher percentage than the overall increase in number of test-takers.

What's really telling is that, despite all the criticism of the SAT, Yale
responded to the increasing number of applicants by using the SAT more
aggressively to filter applicants. In other words, when faced with a larger
applicant pool, Yale decided to reject students with SAT performance that it
had previous deemed adequate, because it couldn't think of any better criteria
to use to distinguish the additional applicants.

[1] Yale's data:
[http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/W032_Fresh_SATs_5.pd...](http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/W032_Fresh_SATs_5.pdf).
Tables for calculating recentered scores pre and post-1995:
[http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalen...](http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalence/sat-
individual).

[2]
[http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/S...](http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SATPercentileRanks.pdf).

~~~
saraid216
Yeah, to expand on what I meant,

Population growth -> Naturally leads to more people willing to criticize the
SAT because percentages. Especially if there remains a similar or greater
level of exposure to it, which there has.

Population growth -> Larger applicant pool, and assuming Yale or whoever is
unwilling to drop the SAT as a filtering mechanism, naturally means they'll
raise their various bars, including the SAT score cutoff.

~~~
rayiner
Obviously you would expect Yale to raise SAT medians in addition to other
criteria as the number of applicants goes up, in order to maintain the class
size (which it has done for the relevant time). What's interesting is how much
the bars are raised relative to each other. Remember, the criteria aren't
perfectly correlated. If you go from top 4% SAT to top 2%, and top 10% GPA to
top 5%, you should expect the number of people passing the filter to shrink by
much more than 50%. It could be as much as a 75% reduction if SAT and GPA
aren't correlated at all.

Apparently, the number of applications at Yale have gone up by 2.6x since
1976, and the admissions rate has gone down by 3.5x. So Yale needs to raise
its various bars to let through 1/3 or 1/4 as much of the applicant pool, in
totol. The fact that it has raised its SAT bar from top 4℅ to top 1% suggests
that _all_ the increased stringency in the admission standard comes from the
SAT criterion. Indeed, to achieve that increase in SAT median with only a 2.6x
increase in apps, Yale probably had to make some criteria _less_ stringent.

That's the crazy part. Not that SAT went up, but that it seems to have been
the primary tool to filter the additional applicants, to the exclusion of
other criteria.

~~~
saraid216
Hrm. Couple things that come to mind, if you want to keep poking:

* how did the distribution of SAT scores among applicants change during that period?

* how did tuitions change over that period?

* what's the GPA distribution versus the SAT distribution? At some point we went from a 0-4 GPA scale to a 0-5 GPA scale, and IIRC, the SAT's numbers have moved around as well. Can the preference for modifying the SAT bar be related to finer granularity being available? You sort of allude to this in your original comment. GPA may not have gone up simply because it's a worse metric than even the SAT.

* did the rise coincide with all standardized tests, or just the SAT I? SAT II? AP exams? IB?

* was the applicant pool affected by accepting transfer students or affirmative action type of deals?

* what does "top X%" actually mean in this case? Is it a stated admissions policy? Or is it it just that students below a certain SAT score virtually never qualify on some other criteria?

Sorry if some of these would be answered by your links. I'm less interested
finding the answer and more just giving you a sounding board.

------
prawks
Removing the penalty for wrong answers seems to be an interesting choice to
me. I thought a strong part of the test was the emphasis on carefully
considering the questions so that the answers given were deliberate.

Without a penalty, guessing is just a chance for free points. Not really a
measure of any skill aside from test taking (of which the SAT already suffers
from enough). But I guess if all of your tests at a university are similar to
the SAT, it might be a good measure of your potential success.

~~~
the_watcher
Penalties for wrong answers are the ultimate test of test-taking abilities
(actually, to an extent, an ability to implement probabilities). Your strategy
changes based on how many answers you can eliminate, rather than on if you
know the correct answer.

~~~
wtallis
Being able to eliminate wrong answers is pretty much the same skill as being
able to notice that you made a mistake when you look over your work. It's
valuable for more than test taking.

~~~
the_watcher
I disagree. Checking your work and realizing you forgot a semi colon or that
you made an addition mistake is a very different skill than being able to
eliminate an answer since you know it is incorrect. Further, it's an even more
distinct skill to know when you have eliminated enough answers for your
expected correct answer value >= your expected wrong answer value.

That's not saying that they are not valuable skills on their own, but at age
16, they are far more associated with test prep than what the SAT purports to
measure.

~~~
wtallis
No, if you're actually checking your work properly, you're going in with the
assumption that there are mistakes to be found, and you're looking for reasons
why your answer might be wrong - the same as when you're trying to eliminate a
candidate answer in a multiple choice test (especially if "none of the above"
is one of the choices). The gaming the odds aspect of the SAT only comes into
play when you've run out of time or run out of knowledge to use to support or
contradict possible answers.

~~~
the_watcher
Checking my work with the assumption I made mistakes is distinct from knowing
that 2 of the 5 answers are wrong, and therefore my expected value of a guess
is positive vs. when i cannot eliminate any. Saying that checking your work
and knowing some answers are wrong but not which one is right are the same
thing is simply not true.

~~~
wtallis
Way to ignore the last sentence of my comment. I consider the guess to be
separate from the process of elimination that precedes it and sometimes
obviates it.

------
jmduke
This is the best news about college admissions that I've heard in a very long
time. As someone who was fortunate enough not to be disadvantaged by the clear
socioeconomic preferences of the SAT (and I'm guessing the ACT as well, though
I had much less exposure to it), this is absolutely a step in the right
direction.

~~~
watty
What are these "clear socioeconomic preferences" of the SAT?

~~~
spicyj
Here's a striking image from NBC:

[https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920](https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920)

~~~
ars
That's hardly specific to the SAT, that's true in basically every single thing
measured. Including health.

Lower income people do worse. Or perhaps people who are "worse" have lower
income.

~~~
sarah2079
Yes. And these are problems that need addressing. Especially when the people
who are doing worse are not even the ones earning the low income, just those
with the bad fortune of having low income parents.

~~~
wtallis
It's not the College Board's problem to solve. Their goal with the SAT is to
offer colleges a predictor of college success. Why should they try to
incorporate a form of affirmative action into their test? Why not leave that
up to the admissions offices that will have a more complete picture of the
applicant's background?

~~~
matchu
Making test prep materials more accessible doesn't really sound like
affirmative action to me. It's not an attempt to _counterbalance_ this
particular socioeconomic bias, but rather to _remove_ it.

~~~
wtallis
The socioeconomic correlation isn't a bias - it reflects the reality that a
poor childhood leaves you less prepared to do well in college. Erasing that
effect without fully erasing the causes of the effect is a cover-up that
defeats the purpose of the SAT.

Making the test harder to hack by acquiring shallow knowledge (like memorizing
"SAT words" without actually being well-read enough to have seen or used them
before) is a good thing, because it will make the test a more accurate
predictor of the applicant's general level of knowledge. But simply making
those test-prep tools more affordable and easier to find will only have the
effect of compressing the distribution of scores, making the SAT a less
discriminating test in the technical sense and thus a less useful measurement.

~~~
Steko
The fact that there's a natural correlation doesn't mean the SAT's correlation
is identical to the natural one. And if it's worse than it should certainly
try and change that.

~~~
wtallis
Of course - I never said otherwise. But the changes they're making don't seem
to be simply about making the test more accessible and less elitist; they seem
to invite ceiling effects, and I don't see how that helps anyone.

Rather than making test prep widely available, the College Board should strive
to design a test for which the only effective prep is getting a solid well-
rounded education, and they should pay no attention to the complaints that
some of the questions are too hard for almost anyone to answer.

~~~
matchu
I agree that, if the SAT were ideal, there'd be no way to prepare for it in
particular.

However, a nationally standardized test must have consistent scores to be
useful, and currently the best way to do that is to keep the general format
and content consistent. That means that a student can discover and prepare for
the test's general format and content in advance, which is definitely
advantageous.

A truly ideal SAT would have a different format and test wildly different
skills every time it's issued in order to defeat the idea of test-specific
preparation, but still produce meaningful scores. I'm skeptical that such a
test can produce sufficiently consistent scores, though I'm very willing to
someday be proven wrong by some clever test developer. That'd be pretty neat.

So, until we create an SAT for which test-specific preparation is meaningless,
it's important that test prep resources are distributed evenly so that
students with good educations won't have artificially lower scores due to
unfamiliarity with the SAT's standard format and content. It's an unfortunate
but necessary compromise :/

------
the_watcher
My immediate reaction: My score is now forever unrelatable to all except those
who took the exam between 2005 and 2014. Not that anyone has asked my SAT
score since I got into undergrad, but now a sizable group of people who did
substantially poorer than me will seem as though they did extremely well (a
1550, for example, means something very different depending on which exam you
took, while my score of above 1600 will immediate remind people I took the
2400 exam).

It doesn't affect me at all, and I'm not complaining, but that's what ran
through my head.

~~~
MetricMike
If you chop off the essay score, you'll still be related to everybody ever
(with respect to test revisions).

~~~
the_watcher
Yes, I know. But if I got a 1500 on the new 2400 test, you could always just
say you got a 1500. There's going to be some number of people who forget about
the change and when it happened (people do it now, I doubt they'll forget less
often now). However, you say a score above 2400 and everyone immediately
remembers the change.

Again, I don't care about how this affects me, it's just the most interesting
and relevant part to me.

------
zavi
"Math questions will focus on three areas: linear equations; complex equations
or functions; and ratios, percentages and proportional reasoning. Calculators
will be permitted on only part of the math section."

As if math requirements for American students aren't low enough already.

~~~
aet
What do you propose to add to this list?

~~~
picomancer
Basic algebra and geometry: Order of operations; simplifying expressions;
solving quadratic equations by factoring; finding area and perimeter of
shapes; the classic "garden problem" (maximize area of a rectangle given fixed
sum of 3 sides); naming the Platonic solids; adding, subtracting, multiplying,
and dividing complex numbers; logarithms; solving exponential equations.

I think probability, in particular Bayes' Theorem, and basic number theory
should be covered in a high school curriculum for the college-bound as well.
Including converting numbers between base 2, base 10, and base 16; solving
linear congruences with small moduli by trial and error; finding gcd and lcm;
prime factorization; determining whether a pair of numbers is relatively
prime. Teaching the extended Euclidean algorithm in high school would be on my
"nice-to-have" wishlist, but there's only so much classroom time available.

~~~
transientbug
Part of the problem for why this stuff isn't taught in high school as much is
that (and I do say this with some hesitance, as an engineering student who has
had a strong math education, imo) I feel most people would probably not
benefit much from having that additional content added into the high school
course. The other and more major issue I see is that universities seem to be
(just from personal experience and hearing friends stories too) starting to
want students to take most of their higher maths, that above basic algebra it
seems sometimes, at the university. While you could argue that this is because
they are greedy and want more money from forcing students to take more
classes, I'd like to think that the reason why is because of how fragmented
american high school math courses can be.

Personally, as an engineering student, I'd rather take most of my math classes
here at my university because they tend to all be tied together (both with the
math department and engineering department courses) well and I know that where
I leave off in Ordinary Diff Eq, I will pick right back up from in Ord. Diff.
Eq 2. Coming from having taken calculus and calculus 2 in high school and
having entered straight to calculus 3 in university, I didn't have this
comfort and in fact ended up missing some content between the classes as a
result. There is also the issue of choice, and the limits of it within the
context of high school curriculum.

Just my 2 cents against teaching additional stuff in high school (or probably
addressing the wrong point within this comment). Also, I'm not sure
(obviously) what its like across the nation, but at my high school at least
these topics where all covered and taught to (nearly) all students: > Basic
algebra and geometry: Order of operations; simplifying expressions; solving
quadratic equations by factoring; finding area and perimeter of shapes; the
classic "garden problem" (maximize area of a rectangle given fixed sum of 3
sides); naming the Platonic solids; adding, subtracting, multiplying, and
dividing complex numbers; logarithms; solving exponential equations. [...]
solving linear congruences with small moduli by trial and error; finding gcd
and lcm; prime factorization;

~~~
picomancer
> most people would probably not benefit much from having that additional
> content added into the high school course

It would be great if we could switch from content to teaching actual
mathematical reasoning. You can read a famous essay called "Lockhart's Lament"
for more about this subject. But that's not something that's happening right
now either in classrooms or on the standardized tests.

My point is that you have to teach _something_ in high school, and it doesn't
feel like the new SAT tests anywhere near four years' worth of content.

> linear equations; complex equations or functions; and ratios, percentages
> and proportional reasoning

"Linear equations" are a topic that can easily be taught in a month or less.
"Complex equations or functions" is unclear, but I assume this means quadratic
equations or maybe basic trigonometry -- probably a semester's worth or less.
"Ratios, percentages and proportional reasoning" is really middle school level
math -- or even elementary school level. It doesn't belong in a high school
curriculum, except as review or remedial material.

So all of this content consumes less than a year of high school. I agree that
maybe four years of intensive math coursework may be the wrong bar to set for
the SAT, but is it setting the bar too high to expect college-bound seniors to
know more than a single year worth of math content?

For that matter, only the best students should be expected to get a high score
on the SAT; otherwise, the SAT score becomes meaningless. So I should re-
phrase the question:

Is it setting the bar too high to expect the best math students among college-
bound seniors to know more than a single year worth of math content?

~~~
aet
The suggested prep for the Math 2 subject test: More than three years of
college-preparatory mathematics, including two years of algebra, one year of
geometry, and elementary functions (precalculus) or trigonometry or both. I
think the "put it on the subject test" is a powerful argument.

------
jackhammons
David Coleman, president of the College Board, criticized his own test, the
SAT, and its main rival, the ACT, saying that both “have become disconnected
from the work of our high schools.”

Understatement of the year.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
When I took the ACT, two of the sections were Science Reasoning and Reading
Comprehension (or something similar). The thing is, they required the exact
same set of skills: the ability to read a passage and answer questions based
upon what you read. The only real difference between them was that the Science
Reasoning portion dealt with science related topics. I scored 36 in both
sections the first and only time I took the test.

------
jfmercer
Sounds like they're dumbing down the SAT. Those soon-to-be-cut "obscure"
vocabulary words are critical for mastering English.

~~~
Cookingboy
First of all, I don't think it's true. And secondly, even if that's true,
mastering English isn't exactly a top priority skill needed for young people
to succeed in today's world, especially not up there with math and science
(which is ridiculously easy on these standard tests and is weighted less.
Actually, does SAT even have a science portion???). SAT does not test general
knowledge either. (Yes, I know of SAT-II, but they aren't taken by most people
and aren't required by colleges).

------
pyromine
To be honest I'm somewhat sad that Khan Academy is jumping on board with this
and planning on offering SAT prep videos. I don't think it's appropriate to
mix such meaningless skills as test taking, with the true skills Khan Academy
helps teach. I believe it could distract students from the important material,
by allowing them to care more of what will help them improve that one
particular test score.

~~~
spicyj
The official SAT problems are well-written and so we're happy to teach
students how to do them.

We're not going to teach test-taking.

~~~
pyromine
But by specifically focusing on the SAT questions aren't you not focusing on
the fundamental skills, but rather the specific of how they show up in the
SAT's?

------
devindotcom
This is great. I think the changes to the essay portion are excellent.

As a native english speaker, my instinct is to emphasize the essay part - but
I realize that's idealistic. Still, I think essays and writing are critical
for showing one's ability to synthesize (there's that word) and organize one's
ideas or those of others. I think writing should be emphasized and multiple
native languages supported... but that's work for the next revision. This one
is certainly welcome.

~~~
walshemj
Sucks really badly for dyslexics though.

~~~
devindotcom
Agreed... a test that aims to be as broadly applicable as possible should
accommodate as many variations and common problems as possible. It may be the
difference between 20 million people taking it and 20.3 million, but for that
.3 million it's incredibly important.

~~~
walshemj
Yes probably needs the ability to do an oral Viva - funnily enough one of my
uncles did that at Oxford back in the 50's for his MA as his writing was so
bad :-)

------
ars
Why is "ending the longstanding penalty for guessing wrong" a good thing?

~~~
jaybaxter
When there is a penalty for wrong guesses, students who have a pretty good
idea that they know the answer, but aren't certain, must waste time
determining whether it is in their favor to answer the question.

Evaluating whether it is worth it to take a guess is a test-taking skill, and
the SAT is trying to shift away from test-taking skills.

~~~
Workaphobia
What's hard about it? If you can eliminate even one answer it's in your favor
to guess.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Really you can just always guess. When you can't eliminate any answers,
guessing has the same expected value as leaving the question blank. If you can
eliminate one or more answers, the expected value is higher for guessing than
for leaving the question blank. So in no situations does guessing decrease
your expected value.

------
gmichnikov
It's worth noting the similarities to the Common Core. David Coleman was one
of the main authors of the Common Core and is now president of the College
Board.

This article: "Sometimes, students will be asked not just to select the right
answer, but to justify it by choosing the quote from a text that provides the
best supporting evidence for their answer." "Going forward, though, students
will get a source document and be asked to analyze it for its use of evidence,
reasoning and persuasive or stylistic technique."

CCSS CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.1 Read closely to determine what the text says
explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual
evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific
claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the
relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.

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truantbuick
As a member of the first year of students who were required to do the writing
section, I'm glad it's gone. What an absolute crock that was, and it probably
screwed up the other sections as well. When you make an already ponderous test
over an hour longer, it becomes less about aptitude and more about endurance.

~~~
anigbrowl
As if real life never presented such challenges.

~~~
truantbuick
Real life has never sprung a random topic on me at 7:30 AM and required me to
have a handwritten essay written 25 minutes later. This essay, in a wildly
naive attempt to limit the subjective value of writing, was judged largely on
"coherency".

We had computers back in 2005, and almost all students typed their school
essays out, but the college board hadn't got with it. Since it took me so long
to handwrite things, I didn't have a moment to think about the topic. Instead,
my strategy was to prepare an extremely formulaic essay, and then furiously
write as fast as I could. Hey, it worked, except I was already stressed and
tired by the end of the essay with over 3 hours of test to go.

To backtrack a bit, I've always assumed the SAT to be about aptitude for
reasoning, not about throwing "real life" challenges at you.

~~~
anigbrowl
_Real life has never sprung a random topic on me at 7:30 AM and required me to
have a handwritten essay written 25 minutes later._

But you knew in advance taht you were going to have to write an essay when you
took the SAT, no? And while it may not have happened to you since, I can think
of numerous examples where people have to do exactly that - lawyers, managers,
doctors...

I'm sorry you find it hard to write things by hand, but that's something most
people learn to deal with in junior school. I was a very slow writer myself,
and I overcame it with...practice. Indeed, when under time pressure to write
something I often find it easier to write by hand because I _don 't_ have
editing facilities available beyond basic crossing-out.

~~~
watwut
He did knew it advance and thus memorized formulaic essay. Yes, you can also
get faster at writing by practice.

The problem is that speed of writing is irrelevant in almost all contexts and
training it ridiculous waste of time - unless you need SAT. Which is
reasonable complaint about SAT. If they would be measuring how fast you run,
then you could prepare for it by running a lot. It would not make it the best
possible test.

Mangers and doctors do not write essays on random topics. They write texts
about their work on topics they supposedly know well.

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joelgrus
"She still embodies all the awful stereotypes she did before!" "But she's got
a new hat!"

------
hristov
I wish I had had the chance to take this, I could have gotten a perfect score.
Taking the SAT as an ESL student those obscure words just kill you. There is a
set of words that appear nowhere in modern English other than on an SAT test.

~~~
WalterBright
If I was on a college admissions committee, I'd take into account ESL status
when comparing verbal scores from one applicant to the next. It only makes
sense.

~~~
Steko
There's TOEFL:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_of_English_as_a_Foreign_La...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_of_English_as_a_Foreign_Language)

------
rch
I'll start respecting the SAT just as soon as the results can be accepted as a
measure of general intelligence. It shouldn't be that difficult to
simultaneously test for both content mastery and aptitude.

~~~
hga
It _used_ to be a fairly good measure of 'g', and I note the tables I found on
the net that equate the scores of the 1979 exam I took are very close to my
results on formal IQ tests, like within 2-3 points.

Reversing the watering down of the exam ... that's pretty hard to imagine for
the foreseeable future.

------
cykho
It's great when a standardized test keeps on changing. It kind of negates the
point. Fundamentally the SAT (or any general test) is an arbitrary measure of
you much you study. Just leave it be I say.

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Datsundere
One thing nice about the change is that for a wrong answer students won't be
penalized.

------
bhaumik
R.I.P. SAT Vocab Flashcards [& every App dedicated to them]

------
gregimba
I take the SAT this saturday. To be blunt: They owe everyone a fucking apology
over this.

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MyNameIsMK
The education system is designed to operate backwards on purpose. Think about
it.

~~~
MyNameIsMK
Throw independent thought out the window please.

