Opportunity Knocking? – SAT Changes

“What this country needs is not more tests, but more opportunities.”

                                             – David Coleman, President, College Board

With these words a new era was launched at College Board, an era that will have a big impact on your child. So why the radical redesign of this venerable, 90-year old test? Lots of reasons, actually.

One well-researched criticism of the SAT is that it favors students from affluent families who can afford expensive prep. College Board, maker of the SAT, hopes to level the playing field by first offering income-eligible students four free college application fee waivers. They have also announced an “all in” campaign, the goal of which is to encourage Latino, African American and Native American students to take at least one AP course.

Another impetus for the wholesale change is one you might not expect. Through the influence of the SAT, College Board is trying to promote excellent classroom work and accelerate students who are behind. To this end, the company has aligned the new SAT with with the Common Core curriculum. In fact, the new president of College Board, David Coleman, was a key player in creating the Common Core standards. More concretely, College Board will support best practice in classrooms by working with teachers and college faculty to design course frameworks and modules for use in grades 6–12.

A cynic might claim that the changes are because the SAT’s growth has slowed. This is due in part to the above critiques which led a group of universities to adopt a tests-optional admission policy. Then in 2012, for the first time ever, more students took the ACT than the SAT. Many reasons contributed to the ACT’s ascendancy, but students discovered they scored better on this upstart with less prep because it is more direct and better reflects what students do in high school.

Will the redesigned SAT truly open up more opportunities for all? Parents, educators, and students will begin finding out in the spring of 2016.

SAT Overhaul One Year Away!

Let’s have our dessert before dinner.  Be honest, you want to know about the SAT changes more than why it’s changing, right?  Bon appetit!

• No penalty will be assessed for wrong answers. Currently one quarter point is deducted for a wrong answer.
• There are still three sections, but now the first section is Evidence-Based Reading and Writing while section two is Math. These sections will be worth 800 points each and take three hours to complete. The last section is the essay which will be scored separately and take 50 minutes to complete.

Evidence-Based Reading

• 80% of the reading passages will be non-fiction and include one passage from literature, two passages from history and two from science. The great documents of American history will be heavily represented. The reading section will also require students to cite support for their answers from the text and will include graphics and charts.
• The reading section will now contain a writing portion that will “place students in the role of someone revising and editing the work of an unspecified writer.” It will include four passages from three categories — explanatory, argumentative, and narrative nonfiction — and 44 multiple choice questions.
• The sentence completion section, notorious for asking about arcane vocabulary, is being eliminated. Instead, words “that are widely used” such as “synthesis” and “empirical” will be asked about, but in the context of passages.

Math

• Two parts to the math section: a 55-minute, 37 question section that allows calculator use and a 25 minute, 20 question section that prohibits calculator use. Forty-five questions are multiple choice whereas the other 12 require answers entered into a grid. The scope is being narrowed and many more multi-part questions will be asked.

Essay

• This will now be optional and placed at the end of the test. It will no longer be an opinion piece, but directs that “Your essay should not explain whether you agree with [the author’s] claims, but rather explain how [the author] builds an argument to persuade his audience.”
• Finally, the test will be offered in digital and print versions.

Just remember, dinner is next!

The ACT is Changing Too

(This article marks the first in a series documenting the imminent changes in the ACT and SAT tests and an analysis of what this means for you and your freshman, sophomore or junior.)

The radical transformation of the SAT has been detailed in print and digital media for the past six months so we save this for a later article. What is less known is that the ACT is changing as well, though not as dramatically. Let’s take a closer look at the two primary modifications being made to the ACT.

First, the content of the test itself is changing, though the changes will be subtle. In fact, ACT officials claim that students taking the test both this year and next probably won’t notice any difference. The Reading section will include more author comparisons, testing whether students can integrate and compare knowledge across multiple texts. The Mathematics section will include a small bump in the number of problems dealing with statistics and probability. Finally, the essay will require more analysis, increasing its difficulty level to better match the challenge presented by the SAT essay. An overall writing score will still be reported, but students will receive subscores in the areas of ideas & analysis, development & support, organization, and language use. ACT administrators say the changes are evidence-based and better reflect classroom instruction.

The change with the largest possible future impact is the option of computer-based administration of the test. This past April, 4,000 students at 80 test sites tapped away on keyboards taking the computer-based test on a trial run. 2015 will see a broader release of computer-based testing while 2016 is targeted for a nation-wide roll out. And while there is currently no plan to abolish the paper and pencil test, from a preparation perspective, which test a student takes will matter greatly. The number of questions, the content, and even the timeline for reporting scores will be the same as if one was taking the paper and pencil test. However, the ACT has proposed some timing changes for the computer-based version and pricing for computer-based testing has not yet been finalized.

Seniors and juniors are safely ensconced in the “old-world” of testing. The landscape for sophomores and freshman is about to change dramatically, however. Hopefully, these changes will benefit these students when it’s their time to turn their attention to college preparation.

Up Up & Away! Superscoring the SAT & ACT Tests

Can’t quite get your best critical reading and math scores on the same SAT? Does the difficulty level of the ACT’s four sections seemingly change at random from test to test? Most universities offer a fix for these problems through superscoring. When you submit all of your test scores for the SAT or ACT, most schools will take your top score from each section to create a “superscore”. For example, say you sat for the SAT this past May and June earning CR scores of 550 and 580 and math scores of 600 and 550 respectively. Schools would superscore your test by combining your June CR score of 580 with your May math score of 600 for a total combined score of 1180.

While superscoring certainly benefits students, colleges have a stake in the game too. By creating superscores for every student, they boost the overall average scores of their incoming freshman, and thus they climb in college rankings.

Some students worry that taking lots of tests is a black mark on their applications, but most schools utilize computer programs that compile scores and spit out ranked lists of applicants making admissions officers’ jobs a little easier. In other words, most admissions officers never see how many tests you take save at a few select colleges. This may sound like an invitation to take as many tests as you can, but there are good reasons to limit the number of tests you sit for which we covered in our last blog article.

College Board helpfully keeps an up-to-date list of schools that superscore the SAT at SAT Score-Use Practices by Participating Institution. A brief list of colleges that DO NOT superscore the SAT can be found here. The list of schools that superscore the ACT is a bit more elusive. I always encourage students to get in touch with the institutions that they’re considering applying to. The most up-to-date ACT list I found is at Schools that Superscore.

So take a deep breath. When taking your seat on test day remember that your performance on that one test may not solely decide the score a college will use to admit you.

How Many Tests Should I Take?

Open season for SAT and ACT testing typically runs from the beginning of junior year through mid-December of students’ senior year. Over that span, ten SATs and nine ACTs are offered. So how many should you take? While there is no definitive answer, there are many considerations to help you decide.

First, look at the research. Statistics from SAT and ACT indicate that scores plateau after a second test. The numbers from the 2013 ACT, for example, show that 57% of the students taking the test a second time increased their composite score. Research also shows that re-testing too many times can negatively impact your scores. You’ve heard it before – moderation! So is two times the best plan?

Two important caveats to consider before you walk away after only two tests. The first is that you need to be prepped before taking a test. Test prep companies have proliferated for a reason: prep works. Again, research proves that gains are made on the second attempt AFTER preparation. So, if I meet a student who’s taken one ACT, but hasn’t been prepped, there’s a good chance I’ll recommend he take it twice more after prep to maximize his score potential.

Why else would students take the SAT or ACT more than twice?

a) If a college they are applying to “superscores” the tests, students may want to chance a third to earn the best combined score among the three. (See our next blog for more on superscoring).
b) If you are trying to reach a particular score because of athletics or scholarship opportunities, then test away. When accepting athletes, colleges often require a specific score be earned to attend. In this instance, take the respective test as many times as needed to get that score. Similarly, every time you hurdle a milestone score on the SAT or ACT, say 1200 or 29, schools typically kick in more scholarship money. The cost of additional prep and test registration may be peanuts compared to the THOUSANDS students may potentially earn with better test scores.

Also keep in mind that both the SAT and ACT tests are accepted by every four year college. ACT prep is much less time consuming so it’s cost effective. Therefore consider an early ACT test before committing to the SAT. In fact, I usually suggest students take one of each and then focus on the one which they like better and scored better on. Finally, simply taking more tests does not guarantee improvement. Students must take practice tests, utilize strategies and tactics and be conscientious in their preparation.