<p>My daughter just took the SATs today and came home exhausted. The good news is, she is only a junior so if she didn't do very well, she can re-take them in the spring and even next fall, if necessary. </p>
<p>As I helped her prepare for the test these last few months, it occured to me that back in the late '70s the test questions were different, particularly on the reading section (what we used to call the "Verbal" section). As I remember it, that section was primarily analogies and if you didn't have a very good vocabulary, you were out of luck. The section now is called "Critical Reading" and has vocabulary in context and then reading comprehension passages with questions afterwards. Does anyone remember how the verbal section used to be? As for the math section, it's all a blur. The questions they had in the practice tests were differerent from the way they used to be, but I can't put my finger on it. I recall the ones that began "Train A left the station at 6:00pm, going 60mph, and Train B...." or the ones that said things like "If one man can paint a house in 3 days and the other man can paint a house in 5 days, how long will it take for them to paint it together?" </p>
<p>Can anyone in the 50ish crowd help refresh my feeble memory?</p>
<p>They not only recentered the scores in the 1990’s but eliminated the analogies a few years ago. </p>
<p>It’s now been more than 40 years since I took the PSAT, ACT, SAT, SAT Achievement (now subject) tests. Followed by the old, old MCAT, National Boards parts 1-3, Specialty boards, CME tests… Sorry, content gets jumbled together in the corners of my brain.</p>
<p>Not 50ish yet, but I know a bit about SAT history :)</p>
<p>Here are the major changes in the last three decades:</p>
<p>1993 - The SAT is renamed so that the acronym stands for nothing (i.e., “SAT” is no longer an acronym).</p>
<p>1994 - Antonyms are removed from the verbal section and the reading comprehension sub-sections are renamed “Critical Reading”. The TSWE is dropped from the SAT. On the math section, the tested math content is expanded to include basic statistics and probability, slopes of lines, etc.; free-response questions are added; and, students are now allowed to use calculators.</p>
<p>1995 - SAT scores are re-centered to return average SAT scores closer to the middle of the scale (500).</p>
<p>2005 - The “Verbal Reasoning” section of the SAT is renamed “Critical Reading”, and the verbal analogy questions are dropped. A writing skills section, with essay, is added. Three SAT scores, for Critical Reading, Math, and Writing, each on a scale of 200-800, are reported, making the perfect score 2400 instead of 1600. In the math section, quantitative comparison questions are dropped, and the content is expanded again.</p>
<p>The 1980s SAT Verbal was mostly a vocabulary test, in that it had a large number of questions that were quick and easy to answer if you knew the words, but difficult if you did not know the words. It did have a small number of reading comprehension passages, but the number of questions related to them was small relative to the amount of time reading the passage would take, so one test taking tactic was to skip them until one was finished with the rest of the section, then come back to do them.</p>
<p>The 1980s SAT Math was just multiple choice questions on material covered in algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2. One test taking tactic was to plug the listed answers back into the question to find the one that worked.</p>
<p>What are now called SAT Subject tests were called Achievement Tests back then. However, one of them, the English Language Achievement Test, is now the SAT Reasoning Writing section, though it did not have an essay back then (it was just multiple choice questions on English grammar).</p>
<p>The GRE General test back then had three sections. Its Verbal and Quantitative sections were similar to the SAT Verbal and Math sections. It also had an Analytical section of multiple choice logic puzzles that probably made it an easy 800 for math and philosophy majors, and others who took math-with-proofs and/or logic type courses. There were GRE Subject tests that were the college level version of the Achievement Tests.</p>
<p>Here is the difference as I recall- you took them once, you did not prepare and if you had a part time job and had to work the night before the test you worked even if it meant you got home at 2 am and had to take the test at 8 am. If someone tried to make their living by tutoring for the SAT they would have been homeless.</p>
<p>That tactic remains a valid strategy for some of the multiple-choice problems on the modern SAT. Like the older SAT, the current one also tests a significant amount of pre-algebra material.</p>
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<p>Stanley Kaplan did quite well doing just that way back in the 1940s!</p>
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<p>Tests starting with March 2005 don’t have analogies, so I don’t see how this is possible. Are you an non-U.S. based student?</p>
<p>I read that Kaplan started his tutoring his peers back then, but the company didn’t really take off until the 70s and 80s. I’m 59. When I took the SAT (I can’t remember, but I probably took it as a senior in high school, which would have been in 1968-9), I knew no one who took it twice. Also knew no one who had a tutor to help him/her prepare for the test. I was in the top 10% of my class and most of us in that group knew that we’d go to college, but no one was really concerned about finding the “right” fit. Basically, our parents felt that state universities were the only options. I had one friend (whose father was a teacher) and he was the only parent I knew who thought that it was important to go visit different colleges. My experience might well be a function of the fact that I grew up in a working class suburb and most of our families couldn’t have afforded tutors. Also, most parents didn’t have a clue that there might be differences in college. My folks were immigrants who aspired to have college educated kids–that was really important to them. However, to them–“college was college.” They weren’t particularly knowledgeable and felt that the state U was just fine.</p>
<p>^I went to a private school and we all took the SATs twice, once spring junior year, once fall senior year, no matter how good the scores were, the school really, really pushed it. </p>
<p>I remember Kaplan had his workers go in and memorize questions. Each would try to remember as many from different sections as possible and then they’d reconstitute the test. He founded the company because he was shut out of Med School because of a Jewish quota.</p>
<p>My younger son took the last analogy filled SATs for talent search (Jan 2005)- he was sorry to see them go.</p>
<p>Hate to disagree with you ucb, but I think that the latter is incorrect. Until UC pushed the big change in starting March '05, the SAT-M was only Alg I and Geom. Alg II, which is only a handful of problems, was not added to the until recent version.</p>
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<p>Correct. </p>
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<p>Such problems have been around since the dark ages, and are really easy to solve by formula (on cc’s xiggi-method thread). Those problems just don’t occur on every test administration.</p>
<p>Does anyone remember taking the SAT and Achievement Tests on the same day? Achievement Tests used to offered in the afternoon so, for those of us who had to work, it was easier just to take one day off.</p>
<p>I agree with the statements that the changes are the number of times people take them, the excessive emphasis on getting a perfect score, the tutoring, etc. It is true that nobody studied and they took the test based upon what they had already learned. </p>
<p>Now it is considered practically derelict if the student hasn’t been tutored, taken it at least twice, and gotten anything under 700 each. So sad. . .</p>
<p>Back in the day, the only kid who took the SAT more than once in my graduating class, also took the Kaplan review, and sent in some huge computer program as part of his application, and went to Harvard. His parents were teachers. </p>
<p>I remember those analogies, and I found them awful. I remember them like bird is to dog like table is to (battleship?). They never made sense to me. There was no chair among the choices as I recall. Well, maybe there was, but I just couldn’t figure it out. They were on the LSAT, GRE and GMAT when I took them (1978). For me the math was always the easiest part.</p>
<p>My own family was more like those described by Bromfield. My parents thought all colleges were the same more or less. In our town most people went to SUNY because it was affordable. Every year a very few went to private colleges (like 1%). It also seemed like if you went to a private college and received financial aid, you were something of a pariah, which would not be the case today (with upwards of 50% at many “top” colleges).</p>
<p>For some weird reason, my whole family loved the analogies part. For me, they read almost like poetry, and most of the time the answer just radiates as the right one–hard to explain. I have to say, when I took the GRE two years ago, those analogies were brutal–I did okay, but less radiating of right answer that time. :)</p>
<p>Luckily, everyone in my family took the SAT before they removed the analogies.</p>
<p>Until recently, the GRE was quite similar to the 1980s SAT. The GRE analogies were eliminated just this September. “Good riddance”, or “Alas, poor Analogies, we knew them well” depending on your point of view.</p>
<p>S1 took the GRE before it changed over. Liked the analogies and vocab. Thought it was fun. His dad felt the same way about the analogies and logic questions on the LSAT.</p>