SAT to Add: a) An Essay b) Anxiety c) Both

For generations of college-bound students, taking the SAT admissions test has meant three stress-filled hours spent darkening tiny printed bubbles with a finely sharpened No. 2 pencil.

That enduring rite of passage, or at least part of it, is on the verge of major change.

The College Board, which owns the SAT, is expected to announce today that it will add a writing test, including an essay, to the exam, which would stretch the test to as long as 3 1/2 hours.

That and other revisions could amount to the most sweeping overhaul of the SAT in its 76-year history, according to college admissions officers and testing experts. The changes are set to be announced after a meeting of the College Board’s trustees, and would take effect for the class entering college in the fall of 2006.

The new SAT is likely to include a tougher math test and a revised verbal exam, with more reading comprehension questions than before. But it is the prospect of the writing test--and especially, a handwritten essay departing from the multiple-choice format--that marks the most profound shift, and the one most likely to send shivers through many of the 1.3 million students who take the test each year.

Armed only with pencil and paper, students would have 20 to 30 minutes--the time is not yet set--to respond to, or argue a position on, a statement such as, “Any advance involves some loss,” or “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The rest of the writing test would be composed of multiple-choice editing questions on grammar and sentence structure, College Board officials say.

The board is expected to drop the verbal analogies that have bedeviled millions of students over the years. The analogies section likely would be replaced with more reading comprehension questions.

For this year’s eighth-grade graduates, that would mean escape from puzzlers such as whether “clay:potter” is most analogous to “stone:sculptor” or, for example, “chalk:teacher.” (The College Board says it’s “stone:sculptor.”)

The New York-based nonprofit board first announced in March that it was considering major changes to the SAT. The board’s willingness to shift the content--and, some say, the philosophy--of the SAT stemmed from growing debate about the test across the country and, most significantly, pointed criticism from the powerful University of California.

In a major speech in February, UC President Richard C. Atkinson proposed that the university drop the SAT as an admissions requirement, saying it was unfair to many students and tested ill-defined notions of college aptitude. Since then, the proposal has gained momentum among the university’s faculty.

UC’s nine-campus system, the SAT’s biggest client, has said it wants an entrance exam that is more closely tied to what students learn in high school and that includes a writing sample. The UC regents had planned to vote on the decision in July, but may delay the vote to give them time to study the College Board’s changes.

Carla Ferri, the university’s systemwide director of undergraduate admissions, was reluctant to comment on the proposed changes to the SAT before they become official. But she said UC officials generally support many of the planned revisions and are pleased about the likely inclusion of a writing test.

“Writing is essential to everything we do at the university,” Ferri said.

College admissions officers say adding a writing sample to the SAT would provide them with something not often seen in most college applications these days--an essay they can be sure was written exclusively by the student, without help from an adult or the Internet.

But formulating and writing an essay during a timed, high-stakes entrance exam is many college-bound students’ notion of a nightmare. Chavonne Taylor of South- Central Los Angeles sympathizes with the Class of 2006 and is grateful not to be among them.

“They’re just adding something else for you to stress over unnecessarily,” said Taylor, 17, a recent graduate of Manual Arts High School. “This is just another addition to make it even harder.”

Some veterans of the SAT, however, say a writing sample might have helped them.

Annettr’e Johnson, 18, a recent Jordan High School graduate who won a college scholarship because of an essay she wrote, says the inclusion of an essay on the SAT might have boosted her low math and verbal scores.

“My SAT scores don’t show how smart I am,” said Johnson, who plans to attend Cal State Northridge.

She said she found the rows upon rows of answer bubbles on the test confusing. “But when you write an essay,” she said, “you are writing what you feel.”

College Board officials have said the handwritten essays would be reviewed by two readers, who would score it on a scale of 1 to 6, and a third reader if the two initial readers didn’t agree. The essays would then be scanned onto a computer Web site accessible to admissions officers at schools where the student had applied.

Bruce Poch, dean of admissions at Pomona College in Claremont, said he would be interested to read the essays of Pomona applicants, partly to compare them with the typically more polished writings submitted with applications. But he would prefer to receive the SAT essays unscored, he said, to judge them for himself. College Board officials have said sending out unscored essays is unlikely.

The SAT essays are not likely to be read by the harried admissions officers at much larger schools.

At UCLA, which receives nearly 40,000 applications a year, more than any other college in the country, admissions director Vu Tran said the writing test score would be one of many factors considered, but the essay would not be read.

Without an admissions staff trained to evaluate writing skills, Tran said, “I don’t see any benefit in us reading that at all.”

Among some students--and their parents--anxiety is already brewing over the writing exam, test preparation services say. And it’s likely to be very good for business.

Writing is the one academic skill that can be counted on to “really freak kids out,” said Seppy Basili, vice president of Kaplan Inc. He advises students not to panic, to spend five minutes organizing their thoughts and settling on an approach to the question, then dive in.

He sees advantages for those who don’t do well on multiple-choice tests. Because there aren’t right or wrong answers on essay questions, the score on a student’s writing exam is often the easiest one to improve, he said.

With the revised SAT likely to be used for the first time in 2005, the College Board would have relatively little time to design, write and field-test its new questions. But it would not be starting from scratch.

In fact, the SAT’s new writing section probably would resemble the SAT II writing test, an hourlong exam that is one of a series of achievement tests offered by the College Board, said Wayne Camara, the College Board’s vice president of research and development. Sometimes called subject tests, the SAT II exams are taken annually by fewer than a fifth of the high school students who take the SAT.

Several dozen of the nation’s choosiest schools, including the University of California, now require the SAT II writing test, which the College Board indicates may be revised as well, or eventually scuttled as redundant.

The addition of the writing test would increase the maximum combined score on the SAT’s three sections--verbal (to be renamed “critical reading”), math and writing--from 1600 to 2400.

The cost of scoring the writing test would also add between $7 and $11 to the price of the SAT, which will be $26 this fall, Camara said.

Besides the writing exam, Camara said, trustees today also will consider changes to the math test, including adding questions on advanced algebra.

But decisions on some issues may be deferred, Camara said, including whether to require all students to take the writing test even if the colleges they apply to don’t require it, or to give students a choice.

“We know that writing is extremely important, whether you’re an engineer, a teacher or a poet,” he said. “But not all colleges are requiring it for admission. Maybe they’ll all move that way in the future, but right now, it’s hard to say.”

Times staff writer Erika Hayasaki contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

A Sample of Writing Question on SAT

*

This question is of the type that might be used for a writing test under consideration by the College Board.

General Directions:

You will have 25 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage and topic directions carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well reasoned, as well organized, and as carefully written as you can make it.

“It has been often said that rapid technological change requires us to change our morals, customs, and institutions. This observation is believable only if we assume that humanity was made for the machine, not the machine for humanity. If anything, technological progress makes our sense of tradition more necessary than ever.

“Maintaining traditions is not (or need not be) merely a resistance to change, but a positive attachment to some particular way of life and the community that embodies it.”

Adapted from Karl Jahn, “Tradition and Progress”

Topic Directions:

In this excerpt, Jahn argues that we do not have to change our traditions to keep pace with changes in technology.

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his position. Support your position by providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

*

Reprinted with permission from the College Entrance Examination Board.