The
Facts About the New SAT®
In two months, hundreds of thousands of the nation's high school
juniors will gather in exam centers around the country to take
the new SAT®. Much has been written and said-both true and
false-about how the SAT will change. As a result, it is understandable
that some students may be confused about what they will see on
the new test. Here is a review of the basic information to assist
counselors as they work with students who will be taking the first
administration of the exam on March 12, 2005.
The
new SAT will consist of three sections: writing, critical reading,
and math. Each section will be scored on the familiar 200-800
scale. The test will take 3 hours and 45 minutes, as opposed to
the current 3 hours.
The
writing section is new. It will include multiple-choice questions
on grammar and usage and a 25-minute essay to be handwritten by
the student in response to a specific prompt. The essay will count
for 30 percent of the writing score; the multiple-choice questions
will count for the remaining 70 percent. The essay prompts will
be general enough to be comprehensible to all students, but specific
enough to ensure that students can't write their essay ahead of
time.
The
critical reading section was formerly called the verbal section.
Analogies will be eliminated, and short reading passages will
be added to the existing longer reading passages. Those passages
also will test analogical reasoning.
In
the math section, quantitative comparisons will be eliminated.
However, the content will be expanded to include topics from third-year,
college-preparatory math, often referred to as Algebra II.
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