Only thing that matters in the new SAT essay is length (correct facts don't matter)

College Search & Selection
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<p>This MIT professor could tell how the essay would be scored just by looking at its bulk and shape from a distance!</p>

<p>From the NYTimes:
SAT Essay Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors
By MICHAEL WINERIP </p>

<p>Published: May 4, 2005</p>

<p>IN March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology...</p>

<p>"It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the longer the essay, the higher the score," Dr. Perelman said...</p>

<p>"Because M.I.T. is a place where everything is backed by data, I went to my hotel room, counted the words in those essays and put them in an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop."...</p>

<p>He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.</p>

<p>He was also struck by all the factual errors in even the top essays. An essay on the Civil War, given a perfect six, describes the nation being changed forever by the "firing of two shots at Fort Sumter in late 1862." (Actually, it was in early 1861, and, according to "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James M. McPherson, it was "33 hours of bombardment by 4,000 shot and shells.")</p>

<p>Dr. Perelman contacted the College Board and was surprised to learn that on the new SAT essay, students are not penalized for incorrect facts. The official guide for scorers explains: "Writers may make errors in facts or information that do not affect the quality of their essays. For example, a writer may state 'The American Revolution began in 1842' or ' "Anna Karenina," a play by the French author Joseph Conrad, was a very upbeat literary work.' " (Actually, that's 1775; a novel by the Russian Leo Tolstoy; and poor Anna hurls herself under a train.) No matter. "You are scoring the writing, and not the correctness of facts." </p>

<p>How to prepare for such an essay? "I would advise writing as long as possible," said Dr. Perelman, "and include lots of facts, even if they're made up." This, of course, is not what he teaches his M.I.T. students. "It's exactly what we don't want to teach our kids," he said. </p>

<p>SAT graders are told to read an essay just once and spend two to three minutes per essay, and Dr. Perelman is now adept at rapid-fire SAT grading. This reporter held up a sample essay far enough away so it could not be read, and he was still able to guess the correct grade by its bulk and shape. "That's a 4," he said. "It looks like a 4."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html&lt;/a>
(need to register for free)</p>

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<p>I think its ok to not penalize for incorrect facts.</p>

<p>Of course, everything is in moderation. But that example of 2 shots at Fort Sumter in some date is defintely not worth a deduction. Saying the Civil War happened before the American Rev probably merits a nudge.</p>

<p>They are grading essays not history/science/political papers. A paper can be well-written with a few minor mistakes.</p>

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<p>I think the point was, they weren't even going to nudge:</p>

<p>The official guide for scorers explains: "Writers may make errors in facts or information that do not affect the quality of their essays. For example, a writer may state 'The American Revolution began in 1842' or ' "Anna Karenina," a play by the French author Joseph Conrad, was a very upbeat literary work.'</p>

<p>Those are huge errors not minor mistakes and they won't deduct.</p>

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<p>The purpose of the essay is to determine if the student can express their thoughts in writing in a cohesive manner within a given time frame. If the essay is going to be checked for accuracy, it should be a take home test or research materials should be made available and additional time given for fact checking.</p>

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<p>interesting.</p>

<p>another good move is to throw a couple big words in. obviously, don't overdo it but yea...</p>

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<p>macattak: "a cohesive manner"</p>

<p>One could say if your facts were so far off that your argument wouldn't be cohesive, for example, if you argued why three headed dogs should be elected president of Antartica (and you weren't purposely being creative). I'm sure the real reason they don't include facts, is that they were worried about some graders being more knowledgable than others. Therefore, those who got graders who knew the facts may be unfairly punished. They also didn't want graders spending time looking up facts.</p>

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<p>The point is they want to test one set of writing skills: essay organization using appropriate language structures. A longer, well-organized essay with a unifying theme shows the ability to generate ideas, sort them into paragraph units and express them correctly and effectively in appropriate academic vocabulary. Even the dog president of Antarctica could conceivably fill the bill on this if done right (but would probably take too long to generate further ideas with supporting evidence on this topic). Facts and accuracy are important for college too, but that is what the other SAT IIs test. A test is not reliable if it tries to assess too many things at once.</p>

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<p>pyewacket: "A longer, well-organized essay with a unifying theme shows the ability to generate ideas, sort them into paragraph units and express them correctly and effectively in appropriate academic vocabulary."</p>

<p>It seems that the NYTimes article was getting to the point that there was nothing at all academic nor literary in how essays were graded. Essentially, just length (I don't believe that everyone writes well enough, in a manner you so eloquently state, to have over a 90% correlation with length of essay).</p>

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<p>wishful thinking on my part, hormesis3,</p>