<p>Next up: Farewell to Subject Tests</p>
<p>ACT is also going to be revamped with the online option soon. My younger D will start high school this fall and will be caught during these transitions. </p>
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<p>My guess is that the highly selective colleges will continue to require it as an anti-fraud measure.</p>
<p>I’ve not been in favor of pushing these tests on younger kids but these changes have me wondering whether it’s worth pushing my 8th grader to complete the SAT in fall of sophomore year. </p>
<p>Has the college board said anything about whether the new SAT will be required for National Merit semifinalists who took the new PSAT?</p>
<p>So will colleges accept an SAT taken during an applicants sophomore year? Am also thinking I could have my youngest sit for the October or December 2015 SAT. Or take the ACT. No way would I want him to be one of the first test takers. From what I have read the new test is a lot of synthesizing of information. Just doesn’t seem as straight forward.</p>
<p>Yes, colleges will generally accept a sophomore SAT. If you prefer the current version, just start your prep earlier and don’t worry about the new one.</p>
<p>I’m wondering how this is going to affect the automatic merit scholarships some colleges have. Since they are changing the SAT so much they may have a lot more or less high scoring students…</p>
<p>[happy youngest kid will not be affected]</p>
<p>Both of my kids preferred the ACT anyway.</p>
<p>good point about the fact that could have many more high scores(probably after the test has been in affect for a little while first), and colleges can’t take everyone now who has a decent score; there are only a finite number of spots at any one college/university, so if there are more kids scoring higher, that just means they will have to raise the bar higher. And yes, to the person who cited this is dumbing it down - exactly… common core.</p>
<p>The numbered scores are arbitrary anyway. They are just proxies for the percentiles, which colleges are actually trying to get at. By definition, the percentiles don’t change. Colleges will just have to memorize a new set of labels for their target percentiles, which will take them about half an hour.</p>
<p>@Hanna, but what happens if you need to get an 800 just to score in the 91st percentile, as is already the situation with math level2? If the questions are easier, either the test will have to be even more time-pressured than it already is, which creates yet more stress for the students, or else we will have an excess of top scores.</p>
<p>Perhaps the new type questions will start showing up in the experimental sections of the current SAT, so that they can come up with difficulty assessments and a scoring scale that matches the current SAT scoring scale. Perhaps that may be why it won’t be for a few years before the new one is rolled out for real.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure they will design the test so that the score distribution is similar to the way it is now. The only reason Math 2 is weird is because it’s a self-selected group. Do you know what the percentile is for an 800 on the Korean exam? Around 50. Colleges admissions officers are smart enough to figure this out, and I am pretty sure that they consider a 700 on Math 2 better than an 800 on Math 1.</p>
<p>Math 2 is probably scaled that way because they want a (high achieving in math) student who is capable of taking Math 2 to be able to get a similar or higher score on Math 2 as on Math 1. I.e. they want to avoid students asking “what is better, an 800 on Math 1 or a 700 on Math 2?”</p>
<p>If the 800 ceiling is too low, I’ll be unhappy about it. I already think it’s too low, especially in CR. But it mostly bugs me for symbolic reasons. I don’t think it actually affects students’ odds in any meaningful way, so it’s a mistake to get stressed about it. Harvard admitted 720s and rejected 800s even back in the pre-1995 Stone Age when there were only a few hundred verbal 800s per year. </p>
<p>Yes, the Math 2 student pool is very skewed. They don’t want to make the test any harder because it is meant to show mastery of high school math, not college math. You don’t actually need to have linear algebra on that test to show colleges that you’re a student who’ll do well in linear algebra.</p>
<p><a href=“Behind the Cover Story: Todd Balf on the Coming Changes to the SAT - The New York Times”>Behind the Cover Story: Todd Balf on the Coming Changes to the SAT - The New York Times;
<p>Coleman claims he wants to make the SAT more reflective of the high school curriculum (so that it will better predict college grades), but that is not what colleges or students want. The college board already offers tests that are specifically aimed at measuring mastery of the high school curriculum. They’re called SAT2 tests. And the vast majority of colleges don’t want students to take them. And the vast majority of students don’t want to take them, even though they could in theory use them to show off their mastery of high school work.</p>
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<p>Huh? ALL Subject Test takers are a self-selected group. </p>
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<p>I’m pretty sure that they don’t. Indeed, most colleges don’t care about Subject Tests. And of those that do, successful applicants will score high on both math tests.</p>
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<p>It also allows for differences in curriculum across states. For example, one topic that frequently arises on on the M2 test is not taught in our HS until the first couple of weeks of Calc 1. (Don’t ask.) But prior to common core, each state had differences in its curricular timing.</p>
<p>All right it’s a self selected group in a subject that offers two options. So only students who think they will do well take Math 2, because they always have the option to take Math 1. Some schools will require a math or science SAT, and many students think they should show that they are well rounded and take a math whether or not they will score well in it. </p>
<p>The point is that if the new questions are too easy, we will either see a situation where there are a large number of 800’s, or else the college board will limit this by making the test even more time-pressured than it already is. Many people think it’s already too time pressured. Neither one of these outcomes seems better to me.</p>