Big SAT Changes: Essay Section Out, Easier Vocabulary Words

<p>@sseamom—I cannot locate the article right now, but I believe the reason the # of students sitting for the ACT has overtaken the # sitting for the SAT is that the ACT is administered as the state competency exam in either 12 or 14 states. North Carolina and one other added it a year or two ago, tipping the total # of ACT takers over the SAT takers. When states use the test as their state exam, it is administered free of charge during the school day w/o the essay section.</p>

<p>Yes, CT, I saw that. I believe the reason the ACT was chosen for these states is because it more closely mirrors HS classes for the bulk of the students taking it. If it did not, and the SAT was a better fit, IT would have been the choice. Being able to memorize a bunch of words well never made much sense to me, nor did getting an extra penalty for errors, to name a few issues with the SAT.</p>

<p>Changes I, a Sophomore, don’t like. </p>

<p>New questions regarding thee quotes supporting answers in the Reading section.
Essays, although optional, are analytical rather than persuasive. (Most top colleges require essays on ACT so they likely will require them on the new SAT.)</p>

<p>I hadn’t finished reading the Wash Post article when I posted, but have now gotten to the end and saw this link. (This isn’t the article I was trying to find but it communicates the same message.)</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-act-overtook-sat-as-the-top-college-entrance-exam/2012/09/24/d56df11c-0674-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-act-overtook-sat-as-the-top-college-entrance-exam/2012/09/24/d56df11c-0674-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>“ACT has shrewdly marketed its exam to many states as a replacement for (or supplement to) high school exit exams, arguing that adoption will reduce the number of tests a college-bound student must take while encouraging more teenagers to consider college. As a result, virtually 100 percent of students in nine states — including populous ones such as Illinois, Michigan and Colorado — automatically take the ACT with taxpayers footing the bill.”</p>

<p>" The College Board was very slow to adopt a similar marketing strategy, signing up only the less-populated state of Maine to require the SAT of all students. Case in point: North Carolina is about to include the ACT in its state assessment system, meaning that all high school students there must take it, even though the SAT has historically been the dominant college admissions test in that state."</p>

<p>I think I read elsewhere that 13 states (I had guessed 12 or 14) with more to be added are now administering the ACT during the school day.</p>

<p>Dumbing down the test is not the solution.</p>

<p>I don’t know why, but I seem to always miss changes by a year. I took the SATs this past year, my school district canceled the French trip to Quebec the year before we would have gone, the government is discussing adjusting college costs starting around 2018, aka the year I graduate from college…</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/sat-to-drop-essay-requirement-and-return-to-top-score-of-1600-in-redesign-of-admission-test/2014/03/05/2aa9eee4-a46a-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/sat-to-drop-essay-requirement-and-return-to-top-score-of-1600-in-redesign-of-admission-test/2014/03/05/2aa9eee4-a46a-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Glad to hear it. That essay was seriously useless.</p>

<p>This sounds great… but it won’t even be active for me…</p>

<p>So this is going to affect the current freshman class and later right? not the sophmores or juniors</p>

<p>SAT morphs into ACT. Next up: Farewell to subject tests.</p>

<p>My daughters took both. Their ACT scores were way higher then their SAT’s …their scores increased a lot the second time they took the ACT because they knew what to expect and they did no prep the first time. Their ACT scores were game changers. More merit, more acceptances and invites to Honors programs to their safety’s and match schools. The schools don’t promote the ACT around here…but I am sure to tell every parent to make sure their kids take both. </p>

<p>I am sorry for insinuating this (as I am half Spanish myself), but are they making the test easier, particularly for minority students?</p>

<p>I dunno, the optional essay and “easier” vocabulary to me screams they want more minority students to get higher scores. Not to mention most college will want the essay, thereby making it optional a moot point.</p>

<p>Is the ACT preferred by those groups? I am curious.</p>

<p>It will affect most current freshman however freshman can take the current test before the changes. IMO it might be a good idea just in case the new test is a mess when it first is administered.</p>

<p>Will PSAT change as well?<br>
My D is currently a Freshman so will be among the first test takers as a Junior in spring of 2016. </p>

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<p>Ain’t that the truth! Shaking things up would require many more positive changes, but those are steps in the right direction. </p>

<p>The above, however, will mean little to nothing to the students who receive worthwhile advice and guidance. The overwhelming majority of the “test prep” industry is nothing short of worthless, and especially the big names a la Kaplan, Princeton Review and smaller ones a la PrepMe, Method Prep and other Revolution. Coleman is correct in that the biggest accomplishment of those outfits is playing on the insecurities and lack of sophistication of the parents who prefer to spend a few thousand dollars than to provide adquate supervision and guidance to their children. Enroll the kid in a worthless class, blame the kids, and wash your hands is what happens most days. </p>

<p>Regarding the changes, it would be a gross mistake to think the test will be any … easier for the average HS students. The test was never made harder through arcane vocabulary. Cramming through lists of words of stacks of flashcards never accounted for much of an improvement. ETS and TCB could make the test immensenly more difficult by testing reading comprehension and critical reading of words that could be as simple as rank, low, table, and similar when testing their secondary and tertiary meanings. And guess what puzzles most o fthe students? The lack of teaching of reasoning and critical thinking throughout the K-12 where rote memorization and short term retention reigns supreme. </p>

<p>Removing the guessing penalty will not help the strongest students; they do not need that scoring crutch. As far as the displacement of the essay, it seems that this will be one of the last steps to remove all the non-sense brought by the University of California and its then clueless leader Atkinson who listened to his grand-daughter and hired the right academic mercenaries to push the changes that are now to be undone. </p>

<p>@cluelessbass yes it will</p>

<p>Since the colleg board already said that the hard vocabulary words aren’t necessary(and should be removed from the test) and that the essay cant be written in 25 mins(atleast 50), don’t they know that our current marks dont represent our level of education and that we are in a disadvantage.I mean why they cant atleast remove these hards words from the sentence compeletion by now (they already said that thesewords aren’t a college level words).</p>

<p>I am glad that I got through before these changes, because I am really good at knowing how to take multiple choice tests, so the SAT as it was helped me. I never even took an ACT practice test, so I have no idea how I would have done on that, but my 2310 will make no sense to people someday.</p>

<p>The best and fairest change they could make would be to kill the entire test altogether. I sense that these changes are stemming from the growing controversy over the test, and while these changes are certainly big, they are not going to change the fact that this test is an absolutely inaccurate and often completely false predictor of college success.</p>

<p>Does this mean that Collegeboard will reduce the upper vocab in the SAT this Saturday or is it only going in effect in 2016? I figured that since they made an announcement, the vocab for the next SAT (March) will have less Level 5 vocabulary. What do you think?</p>