Entrance Exams, Deconstructed

[안재오]

Entrance Exams, Deconstructed
By SARA IVRY

Published: November 7, 2004



UTS AND BOLTS

SAT: The new SAT consists of three parts: math, critical reading (a new name for the old verbal section) and a new writing section. Each will be worth 200 to 800 points, increasing a perfect score to 2400. The whole experience will take 45 more minutes, including 25 minutes to write an essay and an extra stretch break.

ACT: Still four sections (English, reading, math and science), the ACT will introduce an optional essay on Feb. 12. Essay writers get 30 extra minutes to complete the task, and they will receive an additional score. The ACT is scored on a scale of 1 to 36.

TIP: Thinking of everything, the education publisher Thomson Peterson is offering hints on diet (eat strawberries, for brain power), color (surround yourself with pale apricot, for focus; never red) and scent (sniff spearmint for stress, lavender for energy).

WHICH TEST TO TAKE

SAT: For students matriculating in 2006, many universities will consider scores from either the new SAT (first sitting, March 12) or the old SAT (Dec. 4, Jan. 22). But policies vary. The University of Michigan, for example, will require students who submit SAT scores to take the new version. Historically, the SAT has been viewed as the test preferred by elite institutions. Admissions officers say that such bias no longer exists, and that the decision whether to take the SAT or ACT has more to do with geography than anything else; students on the coasts tend toward the SAT, and their inland peers prefer the ACT.

ACT: Some colleges will require students who choose the ACT to take its writing test. A survey this fall by ACT Inc. shows that 37 percent of four-year colleges and universities -- many of them the more elite institutions -- will require or recommend that students write the essay. To find out what a particular admissions office has decided, consult the ACT site (act.org/aap/writingpref/index.html).

TIP: Counselors advise students to take practice tests to see which test they score better on, and to prepare for only that one exam. The Princeton Review has developed two six-page tests that it says can predict whether a student will do better on the ACT or the SAT, on the new SAT or the old SAT (free through high school guidance counselors or the Review itself).

WRITING

SAT: This new section includes grammar for the first time -- ''improving sentences,'' improving paragraphs'' and ''identifying sentence errors'' -- and the written essay (accounting for 30 percent of the section's score). Scoring on the essay is holistic, assessing overall clarity and reason more than grammar and spelling (though an essay rendered unreadable because of such errors is unlikely to receive a high mark). Like the SAT II writing test, which goes dark in January, the essay prompt will ask students to respond to a quotation or an adapted passage.

ACT: The ACT has long included a grammar component. For the new essay, writers are instructed to take a side on an issue that is ''relatable to students in some sort of universal way,'' like mandatory dress codes, says Ed Colby, an ACT spokesman. The writing test specs are based on the writing skills teachers tell us they're teaching in high school.

TIP: ''Colleges are looking for a level of discourse that shows that a student can deal with college-level writing, but they're not looking for a polished, complete essay'''' says Brian O'Reilly, executive director of SAT information services at the College Board, the test's owner. Sample essays, with the merits and weaknesses of each, are posted on the College Board's Web site (collegeboard.com).

READING

SAT: Analogies, long criticized as irrelevant to what students actually study in school, are no more. Students will continue to find sentence completions and reading passages. Shorter passages have been added.

ACT' No changes. Still consists of reading passages and multiple-choice questions. Analogies? Never.

TIP: Coaches and administrators agree on a key preparatory tool. ''The best way to develop your range of vocabulary is by reading,'' says Mr. O'Reilly. ''If you're a big reader, you're going to tend to be a better writer as well.

MATH

SAT: The new test has done away with the mathematical equivalent of analogies -- quantitative comparisons. Between 15 and 20 percent of questions will test material that has not before been examined on the SAT, including algebra II, and concepts introduced before the junior year but not previously addressed.

ACT: The ACT already tests the spectrum, from plane geometry to precalculus.

TIP: The consensus is to take third-year math. Also: brush up on concepts learned in middle and elementary schools; take practice tests and register for the exam at the end of junior year to get the greatest amount of schooling before the test.


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