The College Board is set to make the largest changes to the SAT in 76 years with the introduction in spring 2005 of a revised version of the test. They decided to reconfigure the test based on internal research in an effort to better reflect today’s college curriculum.

The changes will alter both the verbal and mathematics sections of the test along with adding a new writing portion. The writing portion will replace the SAT II writing test. The College Board also decided to replace the analogies in the verbal section, now renamed the critical reading section, with a short reading section.

In addition the math section’s quantitative comparison portion will be replaced with content from the algebra II curriculum.

The new writing section of the test will include both writing and editing components. The section will be split up into a 35 minute multiple choice segment and a 25 minute essay portion.

The math and critical reading sections of the test will both be reduced from 75 minutes to 70 minutes. In addition the variable section will be reduced from 30 minutes to 25 minutes.

In total the test will be scored out of a possible 2400 points and will increase in length from 3 hours to 3 hours 45 minutes.

According to its website the College Board intend the changes to “further improve the alignment of the SAT to curriculum and instructional practices in high school and college.”

The Board felt that the addition of the writing section “reflects national practice.

”The College Board conducted extensive surveys concerning what skills high school and college professors thought were critical for college. The skills rated most important “represent the essential features of the new SAT essay and its scoring guide.”

Oberlin’s Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid reacted positively to the changes but stressed that the overall high school transcript and school profile were the most important parts of the admissions decision.
“This is a holistic process; we won’t be turning from this holistic view,” she said.

Admissions does intend to read over the essays from the writing section in special cases. Since Admissions does not consider the SAT as heavily as other indicators of success department officials did not anticipate any significant changes to the composition of the incoming class as a result of the new version of the test.

The College has traditionally granted writing proficiency to students that receive a grade of 710 or higher on the SATII writing. There have been no discussions yet on whether students will receive proficiency based on the writing portion of the new SAT.

The old SAT will continue to be used through January 2005 and the new SAT will begin in March of 2005. The high school classes of 2004 and 2005 will be expected to take the current SAT and SATII writing section while the class of 2006 will be the first to solely take the new SAT.

The SAT and the ACT are the primary admissions tests in the United States. The College Board estimates that they administered over 3.1 million SAT I and SAT II tests in the 2002 – 2003 school year. This represents 59 percent of all admissions tests scored during this period.