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Teen takes new SAT, lives to tell about it

By BEN VERHULST
Published March 16, 2005

Millions of Americans across the generations took the old SAT, a memorable and painful step on the path to college. Many even recall their scores into old age. But the old SAT is no more. On Saturday, a new SAT was given for the first time. Here is a report from the front lines:

Early Saturday morning, I was a 6-foot-tall guinea pig, one of the 330,000 high schoolers across America who took the new SAT for the first time.

The aptitude test upon which our future rests - or so many students and their parents believe - had changed for the first time in generations. And I was one of the "lucky" ones to take this new version. It includes an essay, has some higher-level math and does away with those word analogies.

The perfect score is now 2400 instead of 1600.

The good news? It's survivable. After all, I lived to write this column. The bad news? I don't know if there is any yet. I'll get back to you when I hear my scores next month.

Saturday morning, I woke up at 6:45, grabbed a chocolate croissant from Panera - whatever works - and drove out to Admiral Farragut Academy in west St. Petersburg. As some of my friends crammed at the last minute for vocabulary, I looked over a prep book to review the contents of the brand-new SAT Logic and Reasoning Test.

Some of my other friends had paid for an intense course to prepare. I didn't. Either I was ready or I wasn't.

I had taken another standardized test, the ACT, a few weeks ago, so I had a pretty good feel for the pacing and the rigor of the test.

Most of our worries concerned the essay. My friends and I wondered how we should write it. Was it best to put together the standard five paragraphs with plenty of the "vivids" - descriptive phrases - we'd been taught since fourth grade to employ on the FCAT writing segment, or would free form get us more points?

We would soon find out as the "lieutenants" at the academy ushered us into our testing rooms. Having been assigned the band room and seeing no desks, I was frightened by the prospect of having to take the SAT on a music stand but was relieved when I finally noticed desks in the back of the room.

A proctor checked my calculator (Texas Instruments TI-83 Silver Edition) and wristwatch (Fossil, with hands) to ensure they complied with SAT rules. I was warned that if my cell phone was to go off at any time during the next four hours, my test would be invalidated.

After waiting for stragglers and taking 10 minutes to fill out personal information, we started. To everyone's astonishment, the new essay was the very first of the 10 sections of the test. We had 25 minutes.

The prompt - the topic - started with a quote about Columbus' belief that the world was round and how the majority thought him wrong. The prompt asked if "majority rule" should be the standard in government or institutions.

At this point, I had 20 minutes left to plan and write my essay. It is apparent that the testmakers did not intend for me or anyone else to write a long essay (we got only two pages of extra-wide-ruled paper in the answer booklet), but time would end up being the ultimate limiting factor.

I wrote an opinion piece talking of instances where the majority's beliefs and actions were not moral (slavery, the Holocaust, genocide in Rwanda, for example), instances of a minority in power (mostly in nations ruled by a dictator), and concluded with a view of the Supreme Court as the moral compass of our nation, keeping the majority from inflicting harm - or at least its views - on the minority without a balancing arm of government to step in.

After being warned of five minutes left, I was cut off with two sentences left to go in my essay. You have to think on your feet. And you must write fast. I get twice as much time in a class period to write an essay.

With six 25-minute sections and some oddball sections at the end, we still had more than three hours of testing to go. I was surprised to find that everyone's sections were in different order. When I was being tested on my English skills, my friend next to me was doing algebra.

I was glad to find that the dreaded analogies had been pulled from the test, but those darned fill-in-the-blank vocab sections were exactly the same. Even Ivy League adults I asked didn't know some of the words. The test also included contrasting pieces to read and answer questions on, as well as sections asking you to identify errors in grammar and sentence structure.

We had been warned that "advanced Algebra II" concepts would be included on the new SAT. For the most part, the math did not require much of the "advanced" Algebra II I remember, and was certainly much easier than the ACT's math section, which includes trigonometry and gives you little time. The testmakers tried to trip us up, though.

For an example of that, see the diagram of Triangle QRS, above left. Geometrically, the answer can't be known with the given information. I looked at the multiple choice options.

Then I had a D'oh moment. Because the line segment with the length of 3 is the hypotenuse of one of the new triangles, the new segment has to be smaller than that, and only one of the answers was.

For the most part, I was able to answer almost every question and had a bit of time to spare at the end of every section. It felt pretty good, although you can't always gauge your own aptitude early on a Saturday morning. And there's this fact: Neither my nor anyone else's future should come down to how well or poorly we did on one test on one morning.

In sum, here's my advice based on a stressful Saturday morning. A note to the College Board: Give more time on the essay section. To colleges: Take the new scores with a grain of salt. To students: Don't fret so much. I'd much rather take the SAT than my English tests any day. By the way, Ms. Hogan, that's a compliment.

-- Ben Verhulst, 16, is a junior in the International Baccalaureate program at St. Petersburg High School, and yes, he is the son of suburban editor Jim Verhulst.

[Last modified March 16, 2005, 01:32:17]