SAT (test)

I

Introduction

SAT (test), also known as the Scholastic Assessment Tests, examination required by most higher education institutions in the United States for admission to undergraduate degree programs. Formerly called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the exam was officially renamed SAT in 1994. The three-hour, multiple-choice exam measures verbal, math, and reasoning skills. Nearly 1.8 million students take the test each year.

II

History

In 1900 a consortium of eight East Coast colleges and universities known as Ivy League schools formed the College Entrance Examination Board, or College Board. The purpose of the College Board was to simplify the application process for students who were required to take a different entrance exam for each college or university to which they applied. In 1901 the College Board began administering essay exams in a variety of subjects. This process allowed students to take a single set of exams when applying to more than one school. The exams were evaluated by individual colleges and used to make decisions about which students were qualified for admission. In 1926, to simplify the evaluation process, the College Board began administering the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), a new multiple-choice exam. The test, developed in the 1920s by a commission chaired by Princeton University psychologist Carl Brigham, was modeled in part on short-answer exams used to classify U.S. recruits during World War I (1914-1918). By the 1940s the SAT had replaced essay tests as the standard entrance examination used by colleges and universities.

In 1947 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, in cooperation with the College Board and the American Council on Education, created the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to administer both the SAT and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), an examination used to evaluate students applying to graduate degree programs. Henry Chauncey, assistant dean at Harvard University and a member of the College Board, was named president of ETS, and in 1948 ETS began publishing and administering the SAT.

III

Format

The format of the SAT remained multiple choice until the 1990s, when ETS made revisions in the exam to address the concerns of critics who claimed that the SAT was biased against women and minorities. These critics argued that the SAT often tested cultural knowledge that did not adequately account for differences in social and economic backgrounds among test-takers. In 1994, a revised SAT attempted to rectify these concerns with increased emphasis on reading skills, and a 20-minute essay.

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This format remained in place until the debut of the new SAT in 2005. Under the new format, the exam expanded to nearly four hours, and is divided into three sections: critical reading, writing, and math. The new writing portion features an emphasis on grammar, diction, and a 25-minute essay. The math section has also been redesigned with the elimination of quantitative comparison questions and the addition of advanced math. Each of the three sections is worth a total of 800 points, raising the possible SAT score to 2400. Nationwide, scores on the critical reading and math sections of the test are approximately 500.

The revised SAT features two separate divisions of the exam: the SAT I, the general test of critical reading, writing, and math ability taken by most students, and the SAT II, which tests comprehension of specialized subjects chosen by the student. Subjects for the SAT II include English, history, science and language proficiency tests.

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