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 Vallarta Living | July 2005 
Get Prepared for the New SAT
 Rhona Statland De López - The Herald Mexico
There are a number of Mexican students who may be planning to attend college in the United States. Most don't realize, however, that they must start working toward that goal at least a year before they plan to attend.
Too often, Mexican students start the application process after the deadline at many good schools has passed. If you are planning to attend college in September 2006, applications for the most selective schools are usually due by January of that year.
The application itself takes time to complete. In addition to requiring thoughtful essays and teacher recommendations, a majority of schools will ask for your score on the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). This test is administered only a few times a year and it is advisable to take it at least a year before you plan to apply for college. This will give you sufficient time to see how you perform and to decide whether to re-take it if your score doesn't meet the requirements of a particular schoo.
This year, the College Board made a major change to the SAT. It eliminated an analogy section of the test and replaced it with multiple choice questions on grammar and usage, as well as an essay.
Some say the change was made because writing is an essential component of doing well in college, which is what the SAT attempts to gauge. Others insist that the board removed analogies and added an essay when the University of California state school system threatened to stop requiring the SAT because minorities (mainly African-Americans and Hispanics) did so poorly on it.
It is difficult to understand why the College Board believed that Hispanics, many of whom speak English as a second language, might be better at writing an essay in English instead of choosing the right answer to a multiple choice analogy question. Be that as it may, in March of this year, the first SAT with an essay was administered to 300,000 students.
Now you may wonder how 300,000 essays could be graded quickly and efficiently. According to Michael A. Cappeto, vice president for higher education assessment programs for the College Board, more than 6,000 English teachers or professors 80 percent of whom hold master's or doctoral degrees were hired to score the essays. They were given a set of scoring guidelines and a strict system of checks and balances to ensure fairness and consistency in grading the essays.
"Two scorers will review each essay; an experienced third reviewer will be called upon if scores differ by more than one point," Cappeto wrote in the Los Angeles Times a few months before the first SAT essay test was given.
Although test developers said length does not guarantee success and that big words used incorrectly would pull down scores, that's not what Les Perelman, a director of undergraduate writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found. Perelman discovered that the longer the essay, the higher the score. After reviewing more than 50 essays culled from the College Board's web site and other sources, he said, "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, with about 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, with about 400 words, received the top grade of six.
Furthermore, the College Board's official guide for scorers says, "Writers may make errors in facts or information that do not affect the quality of their essays. You are scoring the writing and not the correctness of the facts."
After sending your SAT score to colleges, allow time to get teacher recommendations. Deadlines are strict. All materials must be received before the due date or your application will not be considered.
Since the Mexican mail service is often unreliable, try to fill out the applications online when possible. If not, it might be wise to send your application via DHL or Federal Express to ensure timely delivery.
As you enter high school, it is a good idea to start thinking about applying to U.S. colleges. Find out the application requirements and allow plenty of time to fulfill them. Preparing ahead is as important as good grades when it comes to applying to college.
Rhona Statland de López is always interested in her readers' comments. Please address them to rhonav@gmail.com |
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