How I Gamed the SAT

I wasn't supposed to stop dead in the middle of grading the new essay portion of the SAT. In my stint as a scorer, I had learned the rules: Read quickly, read once, don't stop to analyze, but assign a score from 1 (bottom) to 6 (top) based on my overall impression. So, as I cringed over a preposterous assertion in this 34th or 52nd essay on the topic, "Secrecy: Good or Bad?" I should have known my scoring on this one would be counted as "wrong."

By Karin Klein

April 3, 2005