New SAT Official Study Guides: Preliminary announcement

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Interesting! Just checked the 15-18 Math w/o calculator questions and noticed that the evolution might surprised some. I did like those few questions I read. Never will be a fan of the four choices as it is an unfortunate emulation of the Iowa Boys presentation. An obvious ploy to push more students to gamble with guesses when a bona fide solution was probably in their grasp with just a bit of patience. With or without added penalty, giving up is still not a positive move.

What is one possible solution to the equation 24/x+1 minus 12/x -1 equals 1? Sweet question that should please many from the pluggers-in to the algebra purists via the intuitive thinkers (which might notice 25+12-1 = 35) :slight_smile:

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@xiggi
I agree after all in many ways the decision to come up with the New SAT is mostly driven by losing out to ACT over the years.

Here it looks like CB wants to test students who can do the algebra. That question#18 is a grid in and has to be done without a calculator, this particular one is prone to guessing but others that they write may not be. It looks like this is how they will distinguish the scores at the upper end of the scale.

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The math is mostly fairly advanced algebra and data analysis. The writing is corrections to academic style passages. It seems like they made it close to what is needed for college work. It goes further than the current ACT in being practical.

44

Being able to do the algebra remains the most potent tool as long as it coupled with a minimum of reasoning. What I did like is that this question could be (and should be) solved in a few seconds by using various methods. I also think that many questions will borrow pages from the ACT playbook. I am afraid that this has become necessary to avoid losing more market share at the hands of the clueless states that made the ACT mandatory. But that is another story!

From what I see (so far) I think that the tutors who have excelled to this date will be in higher demand. I think you should be pleased. :slight_smile:

45

Is this the SAT?

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/11/ivy_leagues_meritocracy_lie_how_harvard_and_yale_cook_the_books_for_the_1_percent/

46

I find the released questions to be interesting – a definite raising of the bar. It looks as if one of the goals is to produce an exam that does a better job of identifying stronger math students. There are MANY high school graduates who never learn trig or complex numbers. So replacing, say, a made-up-symbol problem (which can usually solved with middle school level math skills) with a find-the-cosine-of-the-angle-in-quadrant-2 problem is a big philosophical change.

The big shoe we are waiting on is an actual sample test and its scoring chart. And what I would love to see is a comparison of the score profile for the current test compared to the new test (once its given). Do we expect the average math and reading scores to still be in that low 500 range where they currently are? And what percentile will a 600 be? 650? 700? There’s still a lot to wonder here. So getting back to the start of this thread, how do you write a book yet? (Most of you know that this is not just an idle question for me!)

47

It seems like they went further than the ACTs to make the problems relevant to college material. I did notice that one problem required finding the area of a hexagon though.I was going to write something showing how many different ways real SAT problems could be solved, but the new ones don’t seem to have as many solutions

I liked the writing section, where they have realistic documents you need to correct. Overall, IMO the new SAT is pretty cool.

I would doubt the overall average score would change.

I guess when College Board comes out with its book in the summer, it will be easier to write books for this.

48

It should be pretty easy to make up practice tests for the verbal section, particularly writing. For math, there are not enough example problems to make correct tests or math you need to know for the exam.

49

A few things I noticed on the verbal sections. 1) The sentence completion sections are eliminated. 2) The answering of questions on passages is not changed much, but maybe more realistic or academic passages similar to the SAT 3) The essay is allotted 50 rather than 25 minutes. It involves a longish passage which you need to read and explain the author’s technique for making a strong argument. The new essay should provide plenty of business for prep books and tutoring.

50

Humm! On the surface and in theory, that might appear so, but in practice the history is quite different. Even in its current format that is well-known for decades, the SAT resists the creation of copycats. Simply stated, the overwhelming majority of the tests created by wannabe test writers, including the mercenaries hired by the “big” houses remains utterly abysmal. It is simply NOT easy to make up GOOD practice tests. If this hard with largely disseminated bases, think how hard this will be with a WIP!

I also think that the releases of preliminary questions by TCB indicate how much ETS is willing to overhaul the concept and nature of the test. At first, I opined that it would be a mere evolution and one hampered by the need to respect the correlation to the previous years (meaning a 500 in 1980 should be comparable to one today after recentering controls) but I no longer think this is what is happening. I now believe it will more a revolution than an evolution.

I also believe that the presentation (based on what has transpired officially) should send students into cold shivers. This tests seems to move into a direction of a more complex test that will test both the mental acuity (think reasoning) AND the ability to apply brute procedures (think domestic HS.) On an ancillary note, the new SAT can also be seen as a frontal and direct attack on its international base. Heck, if curbing the cheating did not work, you might as well write a test that challenges the intellect of the cheaters!

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(Just to be clear: TCB has done very little to curb international cheating. By refusing to stop the practice of recycling domestic tests for international use, TCB has left the door open year after year. It’s enraging and dispiriting. This fall, for instance, the March 2014 US test was recycled. That means that kids who took it in the US–or who flew to Guam or other US location to take it, as there is no int’l test for March–saw the exact same exam. Let that sink in for a second. Obviously the new test will foil cheaters of that stripe for a while, but there’s still no sign TCB intends to stop the recycling practice.)

To me, the most exciting part is the essay. The current essay is broken by design, easily gamed by formulae and systems that allow completely unskilled writers to score 10+ extremely predictably. The new essay, by somewhat resembling an AP Lang essay, will require students to acquire at least a modicum of actual writing technique and reasoning skill. Big improvement there.

Grammar obviously has some new rules that are not currently tested. I haven’t gone through the questions carefully yet, but I’ve already seen subject COMMA verb and restrictive vs. nonrestrictive clauses. That’s new.

52

Just went through all the question and my initial take is…

Math = SAT Subject Test Math3

Much more math required than before. Old test was more of a logic test, written in the language of Math. New test is mostly just… Math. Difficulty level is much higher for someone like me, who hasn’t taken a math class in ages, and I think it is higher in general (even Easy questions took time to slog through the math, just to make sure).

Reading = ACT level difficulty without the time pressure.

There did not appear to be a single level 5 question included in the sample (I’m not even sure there was a 4). Time pressure is hard to gauge; I am going off the tentative timing chart they have posted…(52 questions in 65 minutes). The addition of a few graphs/charts was a strange riff off the ACT Science section. Without time pressure, these are low difficulty level questions (albeit tiny sample size).

Writing and Language = ACT clone

Okay, not completely, but similar enough. It looks like, as with the ACT, they will use time pressure in place of rigorous test question construction to get the distribution they need (44 questions in 35 minutes).

Essay = lipstick on a pig

Well, of course it is better, how could it get any worse? What is the point of an essay on a standardized test like this? It will continue to be ignored by colleges (they already ignore all those AP essay scores when it comes to admissions). Thankfully they have made this task easier by separating the essay score from the rest of the test.

All in all I’m sticking with my original prediction, especially for Math; this will mean more biz for the test prep companies, not less. Gotta teach those kids SOH-CAH-TOA and how to “complete the square” with those circle formulas, yawn.

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Completing the square is at least something most high school students see before they reach the SAT. And though I used to mock complete-the-square as classic cookbook math, I have had a change of heart about that, as you can see here:

http://advancedmathyoungstudents.com/blog/2014/05/09/it-takes-a-square/

To me, it’s the trig that feels like a bigger deal. I teach plenty of juniors who have not yet learned about radian measure and who can not yet express one trig function in terms of another, and then get the sign right based on the quadrant. So yes, this is a big stimulus for the test prep industry.

As I said, I am very curious to see an actual test. You don’t create a population that can all do trig just by putting it on your test. I wonder if the test will be arranged by subject as well as level of difficulty. Then there would be topics that a kid aiming for say, 650 would not have to worry about. To some extent, that is what the subject tests are already like.

54

I would lay pretty good odds that the trig will mimic the ACT in where it shows up on the test, although I doubt they will set a distinct number of trig question as the ACT does. And if they do include trig on easy/medium questions, those will likely be very straight forward questions.

Whether trig or higher level algebra though, the fact that so few of these question seem susceptible to pure ‘number sense + logic’ solutions itself makes the test more teachable. Most people can learn how to ‘complete the square’. I don’t think most people with weak abstract reasoning abilities can improve very much at all in that area, despite the conventional wisdom that success on the test is all about learning ‘tricks’ (I’m no pro like some of you guys, but in my limited experience, the vast majority of score improvements come from low initial score reference points; for most students, once they are familiar/comfortable with the format and style of the test, very few improvement points follow).

I am surprised by the magnitude of these changes; didn’t see that coming at all. I look forward to seeing an actual test as well.

55

I agree with both of you (in the last post) and I also think the test will be more difficult on the surface, but perhaps easier after a while, and especially if it becomes more like the ACT. My opinion is biased since I valued the SAT as it rewarded the logical (and intuitive) thinker more than the ACT that rewards more your typical high school plodder and paint-by-the number math student.

Obviously, I have to reconcile my opinion that the test might become both more difficult and dumber at the same time! :slight_smile: