Jason Goetz Owner and Operator of Goetz Educational Services (www.goetzeducation.org), and Author of Essays on the Classics!, The Decline of the Epic?, and The Bubble Boys Students: How Will You Conquer the New SAT? The recent changes to the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), given by The College Board several times per year to high school students who wish to attend four-year universities, carry heavy implications for the students who intend to take it. These changes are scheduled to take effect in 2016, when the current crop of high school freshmen are juniors. The test is not their older siblings’ SAT, and is even farther removed from their parents’ SAT. Students and their parents should look at these changes carefully so that they know what test they are taking and are able to prepare themselves adequately. The changes include the following: 1) The writing portion of the test is to become optional; 2) When students choose to take it, the essay they write will be one analyzing a written passage, rather than (as at present) one in which students respond to a prompt using their own experiences; 3) The reading portions will require students include ‘evidence-based’ multiple choice questions; 4) The passages students will be looking at in presumably both the reading and writing portions of the exam will be texts of special relevance to American history or science, rather than the haphazard passage selection of the present exam; 5) The vocabulary portion of the reading section will use common ones rather than ‘obscure’ ones; 6) The math section will be restricted in scope, covering algebra, data analysis, and ‘passport to advanced math’; 7) Points will no longer be subtracted for incorrect multiple-choice answers; 8) The scoring will revert to a ceiling of 1600, rather than 2400; 9) The exam will be offered in both print and digital formats. I will start with the last point, and then go back to the beginning. The availability of a digital format for the SAT is a huge step forward and an opportunity for students to take strong advantage of. When I took the SAT in 2005, the first year of the version currently in place, my writing score was determined to a much larger degree by my poor handwriting (which can be very difficult to read, especially if I am forced to wake up very early in the morning) than by my actual writing ability. During my junior year of high school I was able to write a paper on the aesthetic theory presented in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that my high school teacher claimed would keep a squad of graduate school professors arguing. Yet my SAT Writing score came out as a 630 both times I took the exam, so that I looked like a very average writer. This was a reflection of both the mechanics portion, which I will discuss a few paragraphs from now, and the written essay portion, on both of which my scores were average. I was then, and am now (as can be seen from reviews of my books on Amazon), among the most gifted writers in the nation, yet the SAT as it was then constructed was unable to recognize that. The SAT looked at my writing ability in much the same light as Shakespeare critics often look at his: they claim that because his handwriting is poor he must not have been capable of writing his own plays. This fooled plenty of college admissions offices, and even several high AP Exam scores (which were taken in the afternoon or late morning) could not overcome the short-sightedness of the planners of the SAT. By the time I took the GRE, in 2012 and in digital format, a pair of essays that I felt were less than perfect got me in the 97th percentile. Thus the digital format alone proved highly beneficial to me, as it will to hundreds if not thousands of students whose handwriting leaves something to be desired. Allowing students the choice of whether to take the writing portion is likewise highly beneficial. On one hand it allows students the opportunity to take the initiative. Students who choose to take the section should be given extra consideration by college admissions office not only because they are challenging themselves to do extra—in and of itself a skill that admissions offices often proclaim they are looking for in candidates—but also because compared to those who choose not to take it they will be forced to spend the extra hour or so on the exam itself. This means a greater challenge to their stamina, both intellectual and physical, and reflects deeper ability. One can only see whether this has the effect I am suggesting, though, after a year or two of students taking the test and applying for college admission. Moreover the change in structure of the written essay should be cheered, though it presents significant challenges for students, especially in my home state of California. The ‘personal feelings’ approach to essays is problematic because the writer never knows who will be reading his paper, and thus who will be judging its contents. Some readers may not share the same values as the writers of the paper, and though they are instructed in how to be impartial they are never likely to get to the point where they are in fact unbiased. No matter how many times a reader is told to judge an essay on its mechanics, strength of its thesis, and organization, he is unlikely to make his decision entirely on those criteria. And while this is equally true of essays written to analyze a passage, but whereas a subjective essay will bear subjective criticism, an objective essay will tend to be judged more objectively. One either addresses a written passage effectively, or he doesn’t, and it is much easier to differentiate between the two cases and the degree towards which an essay approaches the one or
