Study: The new SAT is not much better

[flashl]

The writing section added to the SAT has done very little to improve the exam's overall ability to predict how students will do in college, according to research released Tuesday by the test's owner.

Critics of the SAT seized on the College Board's findings, which came three years after the revamped, nearly four-hour exam made its debut.

"After all their ballyhoo about how the new test was going to be a better tool for college admissions, it's not," said Robert Schaeffer, director of the group FairTest. "It's longer and more expensive. That's all you can say about it."

The College Board defended the SAT, saying that no predictor of college success is perfect, but that the exam is a remarkably good one. It emphasized the finding that the writing test actually does a slightly better job of predicting freshman-year college grade point average than do the math or critical reading sections, both of which are multiple choice.

Yahoo (AP)

[Heddi]

1. The SAT is a bunch of junk

I graduated HS in 1994, had taken an all-honours (except for math) load and had a B average in my classes.

I took the pre-SAT and then the real SAT...my grades were so abysmal that I can't even remember what they were....suffice to say, my guidance counselor told me that I would never be accepted to a school where SAT's were required because I would be rejected SOLELY on the SAT grades.

I was a great student with tons of dreams, and I was only allowed (because of SAT scores) to go to 2-year colleges.

sigh.

Now, I'm 32 and working on my BSN (bachelors of science-nursing). I did go to a community college and took 200+ level Bio, Chem, Math, Physiology, Anatomy, microbio, etc. The classes I took were the same classes that the pre-med students at the local university were required to take, so they weren't "easy" 2-year college classes.

Then I went to nursing school (again, a 2 year college. sigh). My GPA in Nursing School was 3.5, and my GPA for pre-req's was 3.9.

Damn those SAT's and froo-froo 4 year universities that are only interested in a number, and not the person attached to those numbers.

---

A girl I went to school with got a 1590 on her SAT's and had every college in the country, basically, falling over themselves to recruit her. She was so high and mighty about being accepted by Yale AND Harvard AND William and Mary AND and and and.....of course, she only got $5k in scholarships so where was the rest of the $$ going to come from???

Anyway---she went to an out-of-state Top 10 college and had been kicked out by the middle of her Sophmore year because of her dismal grades, being put on academic probation and then failing 2 more classes while on academic probation.

So her SAT's proved nothing.

I knew her personally, and she was a great standardized test taker.....once you asked her to do some critical thinking or use logical skills, form an argument, make her own opinion, she just clammed up. Wrote memorization was her thing.

She did well in the classes that required wrote memorization and straight application of facts. But she did horribly in classes that required one to use little bits of information to piece together the "big picture".

The SATs were a waste of BOTH of our times, but for different reasons. ALthough I have to say I am not at all unhappy with the education I received at community colleges. The classes were smaller, more intimate, and just as challenging.

My husband has gone to a large state university for his BA, and then to community college for his nursing degree. He COMPLETELY chooses 2-year over 4 year schools because of the smaller class size. His English 101 class in college had ONE HUNDRED STUDENTS in it....and he was NEVER taught by a professor--only by the aids and grad-students.