SAT

The SAT Reasoning Test, formerly called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the Scholastic Assessment Test, and the SAT I, is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. In the U.S., the SAT is administered by the private Educational Testing Service (ETS) and is developed, published, and scored by the College Board.

Function
There are substantial differences in funding, curricula, grading, and difficulty among U.S. secondary schools due to American federalism. Local governments fund and control the schools. Wealthier jurisdictions enjoy higher tax revenue, and as a result their public schools are better funded. American universities use the SAT (as well as the ACT) to compare applicants from this diverse system, and as a proxy for intelligence.

Structure
The SAT consists of three major sections: Mathematics, Critical Reading, and Writing. Each section is scored on a scale of 200 to 800, with scores always being a multiple of 10. Total scores are calculated by adding up scores of the three sections. Each major section is divided into three parts. There are a total of ten sub-sections, including an experimental section that may be in any of the three major sections. The experimental section is used to normalize questions for future administrations of the SAT and does not count toward the final score. The test takes five hours to complete.

The writing section of the SAT includes multiple choice questions and a brief essay. The essay section, which is always administered first, is twenty-five minutes long. All essays must be in response to a given prompt. The prompts are broad philosophical questions. Test takers may be asked to explain their opinion on the value of work in human life, or whether democracy represents an ideal system of government. While five-paragraph essays are not required, the College Board recommends using a variety of examples drawn from the individual's life experience, from history or from literature. Trained readers assign each essay a score between one and six. Blank essays or those which are considered off-topic are given a score of zero. In the complex process of scaling a test-taker's writing score, the essay score accounts for roughly thirty percent; the multiple choice component, seventy percent. In other words, the essay score represents roughly two hundred and forty points out of 2400; on most test administrations, it should be possible to obtain a score of 2160 or above while leaving the essay blank.

Questions
Most of the questions on the SAT are multiple-choice questions with five answer choices. The questions of each section are ordered by difficulty. However, an important exception exists: Questions that follow the long and short reading passages are organized chronologically instead of by difficulty. Ten of the questions in one of the math sub-sections are not multiple choice. They instead require the test taker to bubble in a number in a four-column grid.

The questions are weighted equally. For each correct answer, one raw point is added. For each incorrect answer one-fourth of a point is deducted. No points are deducted for incorrect math grid-in questions. This ensures that a student's mathematically expected gain from random guessing is zero. The final score is derived from the raw score; the precise conversion chart varies between test administrations.

History of the structure of the test
In the early 1990s, the SAT consisted of six sections: Two math sections (scored together on a 200-800 scale), two verbal sections (scored together on a 200-800 scale), the Test of Standard Written English (scored on a 20-60+ scale), and an equating section. In 1994, the exam was modified, removing antonym questions, and adding math questions that were not multiple choice. The average score on the 1994 modification of the SAT I was usually around 1000 (500 on the verbal, 500 on the math). The most selective schools in the United States (for example, those in the Ivy League) typically had SAT averages exceeding 1400 on the old test.

Beginning with the March 12, 2005 administration of the exam, the SAT Reasoning Test was modified and lengthened. Changes included the removal of analogy questions from the Critical Reading (formerly Verbal) section and quantitative comparisons from the Math section, and the inclusion of a writing section (with an essay) based on the former SAT II Writing Subject Test. The Mathematics section was expanded to cover three years of high school mathematics.

Taking the test
The SAT is offered seven times a year in the United States, in October, November, December, January, March (or April, alternating), May, and June. The test is typically offered on the first Saturday of the month for the November, December, May and June administrations. In other countries, the SAT is offered on the same dates as in the United States except for the first spring test date (i.e. March or April), which is not offered. Candidates may either take the SAT Reasoning Test or up to three SAT Subject Tests on any given test date, except the first spring test date, when only the SAT Reasoning Test is offered. Candidates wishing to take the test may register online at the College Board's website, by mail, or by telephone, at least three weeks before the test date. The SAT Reasoning Test costs $41.50 ($63.50 International). For the Subject tests, students pay an $18 Basic Registration Fee and $8 per test (except for language tests with listening, which cost $19 each). The College Board makes fee waivers available for low income students. Additional fees apply for late registration, standby testing, registration changes, scores by telephone, and extra score reports (beyond the four provided for free). Candidates whose religious beliefs prevent them from taking the test on a Saturday may request to take the test on the following Sunday. Such requests must be made at the time of registration and are subject to denial.

Students with verifiable disabilities are eligible to take the SAT with accommodations. Their time is extended by 50 percent.

Raw scores, scaled scores and percentiles
Students receive their score report approximately two to three weeks after administration of the test, with each section graded on a scale of 200 to 800. In addition to their score, students receive their percentile (the percentage of other test takers with lower scores). The raw score, or the number of points gained from correct answers and lost from incorrect answers (ranges from just under 50 to just under 60, depending upon the test), is not included; however, the raw score can be readily calculated from the information provided on the score report. Students may also receive, for an additional fee, the Question and Answer Service, which provides the student's answer, the correct answer to each question, and online resources explaining each question. The corresponding percentile of each scaled score varies from test to test &mdash; for example, in 2003, a scaled score of 800 in both sections of the SAT Reasoning Test corresponded to a percentile of 99.9, while a scaled score of 800 in the SAT Physics Test corresponded to the 94th percentile. The differences in what scores mean with regard to percentiles are because of the content of the exam and the caliber of students choosing to take each exam. Subject Tests are subject to intensive study (often in the form of an AP, which is relatively more difficult), and only those who know they will perform tend to take these tests, creating a skewed or non-linear distribution of scores. The percentiles that various SAT scores for college-bound seniors correspond to are summarized in the following chart: The "old" SAT (prior to 1995) had a very high ceiling. In any given year, only seven of the million test-takers scored above 1580. Assuming that all of the very brightest people in that U.S. age group, which numbers 3 million, took the test, then a score above 1580 has a rarity of about one in 400 thousand, equivalent to the 99.9997 percentile.

History and name changes
The initials SAT have been used since the test was first introduced in 1901, when it was known as the Scholastic Achievement Test. The test was used mainly by colleges and universities in the northeastern United States. In 1941, after considerable development, the College Board changed the name to the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In 1990, the name was changed to Scholastic Assessment Test. Finally, in 1994, the name was changed to SAT.

The test scoring was initially scaled to make 500 the mean score on each section with a standard deviation of 100. As the test grew more popular and more students from less rigorous schools began taking the test, the average dropped to about 450 for each section. Various attempts to balance out this decline led to statistical anomalies. For example, in certain years it was impossible to get a score of 780 or 790 on a section; one could only get a 770 or below or an 800. To combat the trend toward declining scores, the SAT was "recentered" in 1995, and the average score became again closer to 500. All scores awarded after 1994 are officially reported with an "R" (e.g. 1260R) to reflect this change.

In 2005, the test was changed again, largely in response to criticism by the University of California system. Because of issues concerning ambiguous questions, especially analogies, certain types of questions were eliminated (the analogies disappeared altogether). The test was made marginally harder, as a corrective to the rising number of perfect scores. A new writing section was added, in part to increase the chances of closing the opening gap between the highest and midrange scores. Other factors included the desire to test the writing ability of each student in a personal manner; hence the essay. The New SAT (officially the SAT Reasoning Test) was first offered on March 12, 2005, after the last administration of the "old" SAT, the 1994 revision, in January of that year.

In March of 2006, it was announced that a small percentage of the SAT tests taken in October 2005 had been scored incorrectly, giving some students substantially erroneous scores. The College Board announced they would change the scores for the students who were given a lower score than they earned, but at this point many of those students had already applied to colleges using their original scores. The College Board decided not to change the scores for the students who were given a higher score than they earned. A lawsuit has been filed by a student who received an incorrect low score on the SAT. The lawsuit is currently seeking class action status.

Bias
Critics claim that the SAT is biased towards males, whites, and the rich.

A famous example of alleged bias in the SAT I, and cited by commentators from both ends of the political spectrum (Don't Believe the Hype, Chideya, 1995; The Bell Curve, Hernstein and Murray, 1994 ), is the oarsman-regatta analogy question. The object of the question was to find the pair of terms that have the relationship most similar to the relationship between "runner" and "marathon". The answer was "oarsman" and "regatta".



The question relied upon students knowing the meaning of the two terms, referring to a sport popular with the rich. While 53% of white students correctly answered the question, only 22% of black students did. In response, the ETS reformed their fairness review process. Analogies questions have been eliminated entirely.

The SAT has also been criticized for often having reading passages that espouse environmentalism and multiculturalism. The ETS has responded by limiting the number of such passages or by placing them in the context of opposing viewpoints. In addition, the SAT also avoids references to human evolution because of claims on the part of some students that evolution is an upsetting topic and that discussion of it discriminates against students with conflicting beliefs.

University of California
In a 2001 speech to the American Council on Education, Richard C. Atkinson, then president of the University of California, urged dropping the SAT Reasoning Test as a college admissions requirement:


 * "Anyone involved in education should be concerned about how overemphasis on the SAT is distorting educational priorities and practices, how the test is perceived by many as unfair, and how it can have a devastating impact on the self-esteem and aspirations of young students. There is widespread agreement that overemphasis on the SAT harms American education."

In response to threats by the University of California to drop the SAT as an admission requirement, the College Entrance Examination Board announced the restructuring of the SAT, to take effect in March 2005, as detailed above.

Essay
In 2005, MIT professor Les Perelman plotted essay length versus essay score on the new SAT from released essays and found the correlation between them strikingly high. He argued that he was able to hold up an essay just far enough away to be illegible, and guess what the score of the essay was from the length and shape of it.