Q: (Initially posted January 22, 2004) FROM STUDENT MEMBER JOSIE K. IN GA
What is going to be different about the new SAT, and who exactly will have
to take it? Will it be harder and more challenging, or more objective,
because I have heard so many rumors, but I never know what to believe. Also,
will the scoring be different because they added an essay section?? How long
will the essays have to be? Will it be harder to prepare for this SAT?..

I have recently started going to a SAT prep school, out side of public
school, and its very helpful, but it seems to be all things that i could do
on my own time, without a tutor, for instance, we go over many, many
vocabulary words, and we review Algebra one and Geometry, and a little
Algebra Two. I was just wondering if there might be a cheaper way to study
sufficiently for the SAT, but still save a lot of money ( the prep school is
very costly).
--PS. if I should choose one to get me ready for college, should I choose
Track, which will look really good on my college resumes, or should I choose
SAT prep school, which will really get me ready for the SAT's??. Thanks in
advance again! =]

January 26, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN RI
I can point you to the official word from ETS (the Educational
Testing Service) that creates these tests.
http://www.collegeboard.com/newsat/index.html It's hard to be very
specific about it yet. But it will still be given in a fixed, fairly
short time period, so the essays can't be _very_ long. It will still
be graded on a curve - even if the 'grades' on the essay are
translated as "wonderfully clear and well written" to 'total
unorganized ungrammatical nonsense', their use boils down to a
comparison of how you do relative to the other test-takers. ETS
believes that test prep services don't change the results much, and
they provide free practice and advice on their site. It's
interesting to me that ETS's advice stresses content - learn your
stuff in school, read a lot - and from what I've seen of sample test
preparation services, those stress gamesmanship. They'll say not to
study the content but to focus on eliminating wrong answers from the
multiple choice test, for example. Personally I favor actually
learning stuff - it's actually useful in life to _know_ something -
but a little shrewd guesswork is indeed part of the game. I think
part of the motivation for switching to an essay is to actually look
at how you use language (split infinitives and all) and back off from
multiple choice questions that can be guessed at by people who still
can't write for beans.

College admissions officers are looking for students who have broad
interests and talents, including sports, so if you'd good at track
and reasonably good at standardized tests I wouldn't give up track
for a cram course.

Good luck! Remember that there are lots of good colleges with room for you.
********************
A: FROM MENTOR ANHLAN NGUYEN IN TX
a. The new SAT starts in March 05. All students will need to take that.
However, if possible, a student can still take the SAT before that date.
Once taken, a SAT score is valid for 5 years before college entry

b. The new SAT will contain maths questions from Algebra 1 & 2 and geometry.
For the Verbal section, there will be an essay writing. The length is about
1/2 - 1 page.

c. The new SAT is deemed more difficult than the current one. While less
reliant on 'logic', more theory is expected. It just means more study time
is needed

d. It does not matter where/how you prepare for the SAT. You can do it using
a tutoring service (like Princeton Review, TestMasters etc), privately, or
by yourself if you can. What matters is the score not how or who you use to
do it. The colleges do not care what you use to get the score.

Hope this helps.
********************
A: FROM MENTOR CAROL TOMAN IN IL
I'll just address your question about SAT prep classes since I don't
know about the new SAT nor Track. You are exactly right that SAT prep
classes are very expensive and they cover the same material that you
could study on your own. The classes are good for people who need the
structure of a class in order to get the work done. It sounds like
you're a self-motivated person and you can cover all the topics the
prep classes will teach but more efficiently. My daughter recently
finished her rash of standardized tests and offered the following
advice to another mentee once before:

"Yes, SAT prep does work. The SAT is a test of how well you can take
the SAT, not of your aptitude or of how well you will succeed in
college and life after college, and because it tests how well you can
take the SAT, you can prepare for it. Things like memorizing
difficult word lists will definitely help. So will getting lots and
lots of practice with taking real SATs; the College Board itself puts
out a book called '10 Real SATs' that you should look into. By the
way, the College Board does not release SAT questions to be used in
books other than theirs ­ so no book but '10 Real SATs' will include
actual SAT questions. The questions that other books make up are
therefore not useful practice (and are potentially harmful). (FYI,
Kaplan tends to make up questions that are more difficult than the SAT
itself. Another test-prep company ­ I can’t remember which ­ makes up
easier questions. Again, don’t practice on these.

"Practicing on the test itself is the most important bit, in my
opinion, but there are also a lot of hints and tips that will help you
to maximize your score. For instance (you may have heard this
before), feel free to guess on the SAT. There is no “penalty for
guessing”, however much people will try to tell you that there is. Or
if you are going to “plug-in” answers, start with the middle value of
the multiple-choice answers and eliminate from there ­ then you only
ever have to plug in twice to get a correct answer, and you save time
because of it. Ever heard of Joe Bloggs? Using him can help you
guess correctly. …and so on… Prep
classes and books will tell you some of these tricks, so yes, they
will raise your score.

"I personally think that most prep “classes” are junk ­ they take your
money (usually a lot of your money) and teach just the same things
that are in multitudes of books available from your public library (or
a bookstore, but again, this is expensive). If you learn better
within a class setting, and you can afford a good class, go ahead and
take one. I surpassed my SAT score goals by reading two books and
practicing on real SATs ­ 'Up Your Score: The Underground Guide to the
SAT', the 'Princeton Review’s guide to the SAT', (and '10 Real SATs',
whose test-prep section is not very thorough… after all, they are the
ones making money if you take the test multiple times!). They brought
up many similar points, but at the same time, they brought up enough
different ones to make both of them worth reading. Afterwards, I felt
I had an extremely good basis of SAT-taking strategy to work from.

"You will need to be committed to prepare for the SAT in any
meaningful way, so I would say start looking into classes 3 months
before you plan to take the SAT (to find out when they run, for how
many weeks they run, etc.), or if you are going to work on your own,
starting 1 month ahead (if don’t foresee any large, looming projects
in your future and want to give yourself a break near the end). Of
course, I knocked myself out trying to maximize my potential on the
SAT, so my timetables might be a bit off
for you. :-) Remember, 1) you can always retake the SAT I or any SAT
II subtests (you actually will probably need 3 SAT IIs, if you need
any at all) if you scored really horribly; 2) colleges look at *much*
more than just standardized test scores."