14 ms·

Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

113 points by daegloe 13y ago

spicyj 13y ago
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-partnership-to-close-rich-advantage-in-college-test-prep/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/05/khan-academy-gets-major-par...
- 67726e 13y ago
  "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?
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    You provide them with a premade test-prep curriculum that is interwoven with genuine educational videos, perhaps in a subtle way, such as providing coarse links to review material in response to incorrect answers. Then you hope that educators will either see the value in your cross-links or won't have the time to scrape your question bank and eliminate the cross-references ("condensing" the review material). Disclaimer: I have no actual idea if this is what they're doing, I'm just saying that it could be done this way.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      "Beware your metrics, for they will improve."
  - bradleyjg 13y ago
    Ideally you test better, such that teaching to the test is identical to teaching well. That's the theory behind the Oxbridge tutorial system. Unfortunately good tests and scalable tests seem to be mutually incompatible, and non-scalable tests incommensurable.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    People in discussions like this often assume that it's easy to make test scores go up without teaching the material. Here are specific tests from some large states (the first I found via google): http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1... http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/042610book1w.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/04261... http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf How do you make scores on these specific tests go up to any significant degree without making students learn the material? Please explain the techniques in detail.
    - 67726e 13y ago
      Well, all of the tests are multiple choice. Switching away from the format would certainly encourage a better understanding of material. Given that the format of the 4 choices is general: 1 correct answer, 1 or 2 close but not correct answer, and 1 or 2 obviously wrong answers. Now that format makes thing significantly easier to get the correct answer than simply presenting the problem and asking the student to solve the problem. I'd imagine some of you are thinking "Well hell, they would still need to know the formula", but they also give you formula sheets with the tests. Since they give you a list of possible answers and a list of applicable formulas, you can pretty quickly plug in some numbers and determine the correct answer. Does it still require some base understanding? Yes. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that my grades would not have been as high had I not known how to game the testing system in such a manner. I'm only a few years removed from high school, so I cannot imagine things have changed too much, especially for the better. For reference I am from South Carolina, albeit I went to one of the more performant/richer public school systems in the state.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        Teaching students how to get into the ballpark of the right answer and reject obviously wrong ones increases their understanding. It's an important skill and there are adults out there who embarrass themselves by failing to do it (for example http://www.buzzfeed.com/charlesclymer/5-things-more-likely-to-happen-to-you-than-being-f-fmeu http://www.buzzfeed.com/charlesclymer/5-things-more-likely-t... ). Same thing for taking a reference work (e.g. a formula sheet, a wikipedia page) and figuring out which piece of information you need and applying it. Remember, I'm not asking if the tests could be better. I'm asking what you do to make test scores go up without making understanding go up. I'd be at least moderately convinced if you could even show me two teaching techniques, A and B, where A is superior for test scores but significantly inferior for understanding.
- sehr 13y ago
  This is going to be huge for you guys, congratulations and I hope it all works out!
- abeinstein 13y ago
  As a former SAT prep teacher, I'm very excited to learn about Khan Academy's partnership with the College Board. Previously, success on the SAT seemed to depend solely on how much money was spent on SAT prep. Glad to hear that the College Board is interested in leveling the playing field.
  - vonmoltke 13y ago
    Eh, maybe I'm just an outlier but I got a 1370 in 1997 without really trying, let alone actually spending money to prepare. I'm also a 100% product of public schools.
    - mwerty 13y ago
      Not sure what you are saying. The claim is that you could have done better had you really tried and taking courses is one way of doing that.
      - buckbova 13y ago
        Some feel if they succeed without trying, then this success is more meaningful than those whose foundation for success was built on hard work.
        vostrocity 13y ago
        Some also feel their time is better spent on learning and smart work and not dry, repetitive practice of test-taking strategies.
      - vonmoltke 13y ago
        Maybe I misinterpreted "success on the SAT" and "solely". In context, I took it to mean people had test test prep did well, in the absolute sense, and those who did not have test prep did not do well. I was providing myself as an example of someone who did well in the absolute sense with no preparation. I was not saying I could not have done better with preparation.
    - 13y ago
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MyNameIsMK 13y ago
The education system is designed to operate backwards on purpose. Think about it.
- MyNameIsMK 13y ago
  Throw independent thought out the window please.
zavi 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  What do you propose to add to this list?
  - picomancer 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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;
pyromine 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  Sucks really badly for dyslexics though.
  - devindotcom 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 :-)
jmduke 13y ago
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 13y ago
  What are these "clear socioeconomic preferences" of the SAT?
  - spicyj 13y ago
    Here's a striking image from NBC: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920
    - ars 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        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 13y ago
        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?
shitlord 13y ago
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.
- jmduke 13y ago
  Not just the exams -- the practice exams, the prep courses, the books, the tutors. And not just the money -- the time investment in preparing and taking the SAT/ACT is massive. High schoolers in low-income areas or ones forced into situations where they need to support their family with home care/employment are at a huge disadvantage (though the same can be said about other college admission aspects as well.)
- fiatmoney 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
jackhammons 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
chimeracoder 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - compare 13y ago
    I did decently the last time I took that analogies test. For me, it was all about analyzing the sub-word component meanings (i.e. each syllable and the relations of the syllables,) not just analyzing the vocabulary at the word level. Maybe I'm just strange.
  - Workaphobia 13y ago
    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.
jfmercer 13y ago
Sounds like they're dumbing down the SAT. Those soon-to-be-cut "obscure" vocabulary words are critical for mastering English.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  No, they're not. Learning them outside of a useful or pleasurable context is almost a complete waste of time, akin to collecting porcelain figurines that you dislike and have no place to store. If you run into a word you don't know, look it up.
- Cookingboy 13y ago
  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).
- tgb 13y ago
  They're being replaced by other words and one which actually seem useful, if the two examples they give there are representative.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Besides it's fun to tell people you have logolepsy, but the seizures are controllable.
- hristov 13y ago
  Really? When studying for the SAT I saw words that I have never seen again.
joelgrus 13y ago
"She still embodies all the awful stereotypes she did before!" "But she's got a new hat!"
rayiner 13y ago
> 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-job-candidates-sat-scores-2014-3?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29 http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-bain-mckinsey-j.... 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 13y ago
  Higher population numbers would account for both effects, no?
  - rayiner 13y ago
    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.pdf http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/W032_Fresh_SATs_5.pd.... Tables for calculating recentered scores pre and post-1995: http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalence/sat-individual http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalen.... [2] http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SATPercentileRanks.pdf http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/S....
ars 13y ago
Why is "ending the longstanding penalty for guessing wrong" a good thing?
- jaybaxter 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    What's hard about it? If you can eliminate even one answer it's in your favor to guess.
    - TheCoelacanth 13y ago
      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.
    - jaybaxter 13y ago
      Test questions like the SAT are designed to have wrong answers that look like they are right at first glance, so people who think they have a better than average chance by guessing often don't because they were baited by one of the wrong answers without thinking it all the way through.
- tgb 13y ago
  Reducing student anxiety, probably.
the_watcher 13y ago
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 13y ago
  If you chop off the essay score, you'll still be related to everybody ever (with respect to test revisions).
  - the_watcher 13y ago
    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.
- hga 13y ago
  This is something that's been going on for a long time, something I watch as one who took the exam in 1979. Since then it's been successively watered down to the point it's much less useful. E.g. MIT now accepts the ACT ... and finds it's a better predictor than the SAT (!!!).
- vostrocity 13y ago
  Unlike alma maters or perhaps Xoogler status, I don't think SAT scores ever comes up casually in a conversation, and where it does I doubt someone scoring 1500/2400 would be mixed up for someone scoring 1500/1600.
- MisterBastahrd 13y ago
prawks 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - dublinben 13y ago
    If you know all the answers though, you won't skip any or get any wrong. I didn't get a perfect score by guessing on the hard questions.
    - the_watcher 13y ago
      So no penalty for wrong answers increases the chances of an undeserved perfect score but decreases the test-taking skills advantage in understanding when to guess and when not to guess. The latter is much more common than the former. EDIT: Said the penalty, meant no penalty
  - wtallis 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
bhaumik 13y ago
R.I.P. SAT Vocab Flashcards [& every App dedicated to them]
xanados 13y ago
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.
chroem 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - TepidSolarsoul 13y ago
    "Membranous" definitely isn't arcane (membrane is a contemporary word relevant in scientific contexts), but much of the actual SAT-tested vocabulary like "maudlin" definitely are anachronisms (whose etymology root from obscure cultural allusions). How could one possibly make the mental reasoning leap over multiple levels of indirection from "maudlin" to "Old French Madeleine", and then to "Mary Magdalene" in archaic Latin, and THEN to the word's actual meaning of "overly sentimental"? I might have invoked my Roman Catholic upbringing to figure that one out on-the-fly during my exam? Please. In case you think I'm joking, I'm literally not making this convoluted chain of indirections up: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maudlin#Etymology http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maudlin#Etymology As further reinforcement, surely, the word's frequency of occurrence in corpora over time peaked in 1900, and then its usage dropped off a cliff. Meanwhile, "membrane" still remains widely used and very pertinent. Corroborating Google n-gram viewer statistics (shortened Google Books URLs): maudlin: http://goo.gl/cfGSZP http://goo.gl/cfGSZP membrane: http://goo.gl/aFK9La http://goo.gl/aFK9La Yet, "maudlin" was among the list of commonly-tested vocabulary words in my SAT prep book, and it was even included in the bundled stack of veritable flash cards for practice drills. However, I can't remember seeing "membranous" in the same stack, probably because the knowledge of hard sciences is underrepresented in the test content (instead, you had to take the completely separate SAT subject tests to demonstrate your command of the more-than-relevant scientific disciplines). Better keep opening Old Nassau's gates to the upper echelons of society for anybody who can ace this sort of trivia.
cykho 13y ago
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.
rch 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
truantbuick 13y ago
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 13y ago
  As if real life never presented such challenges.
  - truantbuick 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
gmichnikov 13y ago
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.
gregimba 13y ago
I take the SAT this saturday. To be blunt: They owe everyone a fucking apology over this.
Datsundere 13y ago
One thing nice about the change is that for a wrong answer students won't be penalized.
hristov 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    There's TOEFL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_of_English_as_a_Foreign_Language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_of_English_as_a_Foreign_La...

113 points by daegloe 13y ago

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

67726e 13y ago
"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?
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  You provide them with a premade test-prep curriculum that is interwoven with genuine educational videos, perhaps in a subtle way, such as providing coarse links to review material in response to incorrect answers. Then you hope that educators will either see the value in your cross-links or won't have the time to scrape your question bank and eliminate the cross-references ("condensing" the review material). Disclaimer: I have no actual idea if this is what they're doing, I'm just saying that it could be done this way.
- _delirium 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    "Beware your metrics, for they will improve."
- bradleyjg 13y ago
  Ideally you test better, such that teaching to the test is identical to teaching well. That's the theory behind the Oxbridge tutorial system. Unfortunately good tests and scalable tests seem to be mutually incompatible, and non-scalable tests incommensurable.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  People in discussions like this often assume that it's easy to make test scores go up without teaching the material. Here are specific tests from some large states (the first I found via google): http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1... http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/042610book1w.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/04261... http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf How do you make scores on these specific tests go up to any significant degree without making students learn the material? Please explain the techniques in detail.
  - 67726e 13y ago
    Well, all of the tests are multiple choice. Switching away from the format would certainly encourage a better understanding of material. Given that the format of the 4 choices is general: 1 correct answer, 1 or 2 close but not correct answer, and 1 or 2 obviously wrong answers. Now that format makes thing significantly easier to get the correct answer than simply presenting the problem and asking the student to solve the problem. I'd imagine some of you are thinking "Well hell, they would still need to know the formula", but they also give you formula sheets with the tests. Since they give you a list of possible answers and a list of applicable formulas, you can pretty quickly plug in some numbers and determine the correct answer. Does it still require some base understanding? Yes. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that my grades would not have been as high had I not known how to game the testing system in such a manner. I'm only a few years removed from high school, so I cannot imagine things have changed too much, especially for the better. For reference I am from South Carolina, albeit I went to one of the more performant/richer public school systems in the state.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      Teaching students how to get into the ballpark of the right answer and reject obviously wrong ones increases their understanding. It's an important skill and there are adults out there who embarrass themselves by failing to do it (for example http://www.buzzfeed.com/charlesclymer/5-things-more-likely-to-happen-to-you-than-being-f-fmeu http://www.buzzfeed.com/charlesclymer/5-things-more-likely-t... ). Same thing for taking a reference work (e.g. a formula sheet, a wikipedia page) and figuring out which piece of information you need and applying it. Remember, I'm not asking if the tests could be better. I'm asking what you do to make test scores go up without making understanding go up. I'd be at least moderately convinced if you could even show me two teaching techniques, A and B, where A is superior for test scores but significantly inferior for understanding.
sehr 13y ago
This is going to be huge for you guys, congratulations and I hope it all works out!
abeinstein 13y ago
As a former SAT prep teacher, I'm very excited to learn about Khan Academy's partnership with the College Board. Previously, success on the SAT seemed to depend solely on how much money was spent on SAT prep. Glad to hear that the College Board is interested in leveling the playing field.
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  Eh, maybe I'm just an outlier but I got a 1370 in 1997 without really trying, let alone actually spending money to prepare. I'm also a 100% product of public schools.
  - mwerty 13y ago
    Not sure what you are saying. The claim is that you could have done better had you really tried and taking courses is one way of doing that.
    - buckbova 13y ago
      Some feel if they succeed without trying, then this success is more meaningful than those whose foundation for success was built on hard work.
      - vostrocity 13y ago
        Some also feel their time is better spent on learning and smart work and not dry, repetitive practice of test-taking strategies.
    - vonmoltke 13y ago
      Maybe I misinterpreted "success on the SAT" and "solely". In context, I took it to mean people had test test prep did well, in the absolute sense, and those who did not have test prep did not do well. I was providing myself as an example of someone who did well in the absolute sense with no preparation. I was not saying I could not have done better with preparation.
  - 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
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MyNameIsMK 13y ago

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

MyNameIsMK 13y ago
Throw independent thought out the window please.

zavi 13y ago

"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 13y ago
What do you propose to add to this list?
- picomancer 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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;

pyromine 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago

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 13y ago
Sucks really badly for dyslexics though.
- devindotcom 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 :-)

jmduke 13y ago

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 13y ago
What are these "clear socioeconomic preferences" of the SAT?
- spicyj 13y ago
  Here's a striking image from NBC: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920
  - ars 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        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?

shitlord 13y ago

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.

jmduke 13y ago
Not just the exams -- the practice exams, the prep courses, the books, the tutors. And not just the money -- the time investment in preparing and taking the SAT/ACT is massive. High schoolers in low-income areas or ones forced into situations where they need to support their family with home care/employment are at a huge disadvantage (though the same can be said about other college admission aspects as well.)
fiatmoney 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

jackhammons 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

chimeracoder 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- compare 13y ago
  I did decently the last time I took that analogies test. For me, it was all about analyzing the sub-word component meanings (i.e. each syllable and the relations of the syllables,) not just analyzing the vocabulary at the word level. Maybe I'm just strange.
- Workaphobia 13y ago
  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.

jfmercer 13y ago

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

pessimizer 13y ago
No, they're not. Learning them outside of a useful or pleasurable context is almost a complete waste of time, akin to collecting porcelain figurines that you dislike and have no place to store. If you run into a word you don't know, look it up.
Cookingboy 13y ago
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).
tgb 13y ago
They're being replaced by other words and one which actually seem useful, if the two examples they give there are representative.
Zigurd 13y ago
Besides it's fun to tell people you have logolepsy, but the seizures are controllable.
hristov 13y ago
Really? When studying for the SAT I saw words that I have never seen again.

joelgrus 13y ago

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

rayiner 13y ago

> 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-job-candidates-sat-scores-2014-3?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29 http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-bain-mckinsey-j.... 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 13y ago
Higher population numbers would account for both effects, no?
- rayiner 13y ago
  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.pdf http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/W032_Fresh_SATs_5.pd.... Tables for calculating recentered scores pre and post-1995: http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalence/sat-individual http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalen.... [2] http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SATPercentileRanks.pdf http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/S....

ars 13y ago

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

jaybaxter 13y ago
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 13y ago
  What's hard about it? If you can eliminate even one answer it's in your favor to guess.
  - TheCoelacanth 13y ago
    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.
  - jaybaxter 13y ago
    Test questions like the SAT are designed to have wrong answers that look like they are right at first glance, so people who think they have a better than average chance by guessing often don't because they were baited by one of the wrong answers without thinking it all the way through.
tgb 13y ago
Reducing student anxiety, probably.

the_watcher 13y ago

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 13y ago
If you chop off the essay score, you'll still be related to everybody ever (with respect to test revisions).
- the_watcher 13y ago
  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.
hga 13y ago
This is something that's been going on for a long time, something I watch as one who took the exam in 1979. Since then it's been successively watered down to the point it's much less useful. E.g. MIT now accepts the ACT ... and finds it's a better predictor than the SAT (!!!).
vostrocity 13y ago
Unlike alma maters or perhaps Xoogler status, I don't think SAT scores ever comes up casually in a conversation, and where it does I doubt someone scoring 1500/2400 would be mixed up for someone scoring 1500/1600.
MisterBastahrd 13y ago

prawks 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- dublinben 13y ago
  If you know all the answers though, you won't skip any or get any wrong. I didn't get a perfect score by guessing on the hard questions.
  - the_watcher 13y ago
    So no penalty for wrong answers increases the chances of an undeserved perfect score but decreases the test-taking skills advantage in understanding when to guess and when not to guess. The latter is much more common than the former. EDIT: Said the penalty, meant no penalty
- wtallis 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.

bhaumik 13y ago

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

xanados 13y ago

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.

chroem 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- TepidSolarsoul 13y ago
  "Membranous" definitely isn't arcane (membrane is a contemporary word relevant in scientific contexts), but much of the actual SAT-tested vocabulary like "maudlin" definitely are anachronisms (whose etymology root from obscure cultural allusions). How could one possibly make the mental reasoning leap over multiple levels of indirection from "maudlin" to "Old French Madeleine", and then to "Mary Magdalene" in archaic Latin, and THEN to the word's actual meaning of "overly sentimental"? I might have invoked my Roman Catholic upbringing to figure that one out on-the-fly during my exam? Please. In case you think I'm joking, I'm literally not making this convoluted chain of indirections up: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maudlin#Etymology http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maudlin#Etymology As further reinforcement, surely, the word's frequency of occurrence in corpora over time peaked in 1900, and then its usage dropped off a cliff. Meanwhile, "membrane" still remains widely used and very pertinent. Corroborating Google n-gram viewer statistics (shortened Google Books URLs): maudlin: http://goo.gl/cfGSZP http://goo.gl/cfGSZP membrane: http://goo.gl/aFK9La http://goo.gl/aFK9La Yet, "maudlin" was among the list of commonly-tested vocabulary words in my SAT prep book, and it was even included in the bundled stack of veritable flash cards for practice drills. However, I can't remember seeing "membranous" in the same stack, probably because the knowledge of hard sciences is underrepresented in the test content (instead, you had to take the completely separate SAT subject tests to demonstrate your command of the more-than-relevant scientific disciplines). Better keep opening Old Nassau's gates to the upper echelons of society for anybody who can ace this sort of trivia.

cykho 13y ago

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.

rch 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

truantbuick 13y ago

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 13y ago
As if real life never presented such challenges.
- truantbuick 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.

gmichnikov 13y ago

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.

gregimba 13y ago

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

Datsundere 13y ago

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

hristov 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  There's TOEFL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_of_English_as_a_Foreign_Language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_of_English_as_a_Foreign_La...