Perelman, then a writing professor at MIT, remembers sitting at a conference on college composition that year, hearing a speech about the newfangled test. In other words, the longer your essay, the higher your score. That quick calculation launched Perelman into years of research, experiments, and eloquent rants. And last week, the retired professor from Lexington won a stunning victory.
They ought to be holding parades for Les Perelman at high schools across the country; plenty of people rail against the SAT, but few of them get action. Perelman, 66, is bemused by the turn of events. He also had logic and data on his side. On the face of it, the SAT essay was always absurd: In Asia, test-preparation companies were eager for information.
About the SAT Essay
Any details about what was on the new SAT might be invaluable to their clients. East Asian cram schools have repeatedly exploited that practice to breach the SAT, and the College Board has come to see the test-prep industry as a daunting adversary. It banned tutors and other non-students from taking the exam that day. There was an essay on plate tectonics. A letter by the s labor activist Cesar Chavez. A scientific paper about baby fat.
A passage from a Michael Chabon novel.
Test-prep companies in Asia picked up this chatter and reported back to clients. Both documents contained entire sections from exams given on March 5.
The SAT Essay: What to expect
Among its reading passages? Reuters is not naming them because test-takers agree when they register for the exam not to disclose what's on it. The College Board says that test security and delivering valid scores are central to its mission. But as the brand-new bootleg test booklets show, the cram schools continue to find ways to subvert the defenses of the College Board and its security contractor, Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. The recycling of exam items has enabled test-prep operators to provide international students an advance look at reading passages, grammar problems and other material that may be on future tests.
Sometimes, the cram schools even create answer keys for their clients. The College Board confirmed to Reuters that it plans to continue recycling test material.
If applicants have seen exam material before taking the test, St. Even some cram-school operators agree, saying that the continued reuse of test material will make the new exam an easy mark. Sanli created booklets of past test material to help students prepare for the old SAT.
One former client, now a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Reuters a Sanli booklet helped him score a perfect on the critical reading section of the SAT. How the College Board will succeed at that mission is unclear. Over the past three years, interviews and documents show, the College Board has often tried but failed to plug the flow of leaks.
The man who killed the SAT essay - The Boston Globe
At other times, Reuters found, the College Board decided to go ahead with exams even after being warned that test material it had previously administered was in wide circulation. Market pressures played a role in the decision to remake the test. For years, the college entrance exam industry has been under strain. But a growing number of U.
The SAT remains No. As College Board leaders began working on their new test, they encountered major problems protecting the existing SAT. In May , cram schools in South Korea, known as hagwons , succeeded at obtaining material from the exam the College Board intended to give that month. The security breach was discovered by South Korean law enforcement officials. The SAT was majorly redesigned in This update has made vocabulary slightly less important than it used to be, but it is still a big part of the test.
Test-takers who are not familiar enough with more academic terms might struggle on the writing and language sections, where sometimes context clues are not enough to scrape by. Those aiming for high or perfect scores simply must familiarize themselves with the test's vocabulary. If you are a vocab whiz who thinks that you could crush the SAT with a high or even perfect score of , test your word savvy with this quiz! How much do you know about how car engines work?
And how much do you know about how the English language works? And what about how guns work?