Cracking the Code: Has Teen Found Secret to High SAT Score?

SAT essays only have two pages, therefore you are lying.

maybe she meant 4 pages as in 2 full pages front to back

I just took the SATS. There are two pages...double sided. Thus four pages. Stop jumping on people.

Thank you, Irene and Jen. Apparently people have forgotten that each side of a piece of paper is counted as a page.

Having been in the test prep business for over 28 years, I can assure you the space allowed on for the Written Essay on the SAT is two lined pages. The ACT has four lined pages.

Also, the "secret" discovered by the student in New York is something that has been taught in our SAT and ACT prep courses since the addition of the Written Essay to the SAT several years ago.

Finally, the College Board trains the essay graders to use a specific rubric to score each essay. Among the most important aspects of a student's essay is specifically addressing the essay prompt, inclusion of supportive details in a well-organized manner, and concluding the essay with a summary.

This national attention on longer SAT essays is something we've known about in Texas for the last several years.

Actually, I have proctored many SAT administrations. It is not four sides of a paper either. These are not double-sided pieces of paper. It is two "sides" of a paper, if you will, though that's not really how it looks. You open the answer booklet, and there is a page on the left and a page on the right, and those are the only places you are allowed to write. What SATs are you all taking?

A well-developed vocabularly enables a writer to express cogent thoughts clearly using fewer words, not more. But, on the SAT, you score higher based on wordiness with no regard for quality of the content.

If you've learned what you're supposed to learn in high school, you only need to take the SAT ONCE to do well. All the hard work should be done in school, not in test prep courses.

More words does not alway mean a better essay. Sometimes it may and sometimes it may not and the only way to know that is to sit down and read the content, which apparently they do not do, according to the young man's research (albeit limited). I can tell you the exam does not take int to account visual disorders in which scanned answer sheets can become misalligned, not does it facture in for persons with mobility issues which may not be able to fill in a circle without causing extrenious marks, which alter the score and therefore often are only measure how well the test taker can fill in a circle and line it up in the correct order. I can also tell you they must be interested in measure wealth, if taking special classes and buy special materials elevates most scores, as opposed to taking the test without those expensive items.

When I was studing Elementary Education in the mid 1990's Colleges and Universities, as well as public and private schools were working toward getting away from standardized testing, in favor of individual portfolio for applicants and students. Portfolios give an accurate individual measurement of student's work, as opposed to luck and privaledge, in taking a standardized test, for which students can pay money to prepare for a higher score and often result in inaccurate results. Then in 2000 the nation was forced into increase standardized testing to meet the requirment s of No Child Left Behind. The program sound like it is there for the underprivaledged, but instead it ensures that the underprivaledge cannot compete with that who can afford to pay for special private classes and special test preperation materials. So the push for individual excellence by both higher and lower educations, in both the private and public sectors, faded, as teachers had to once again start teaching for the increased load of standardized test, rather than teaching with the intention of the students actually learning the curriculum so they can independently present themselves and still seem knowledgable.

I don't know about that. I'm an IB student who has been trained to operate within word limits. My first essay was rather simplistic and I wasn't really happy with it, but I scored very well. My second one, however, was shorter, but had good analysis, reasoned arguments, back up, and was written in a style that gets me A's in my Theory of Knowledge and English classes. That one received a score that was lower by almost 60 points, despite being a stronger paper.

If you professor said that, she should be fired as she is totally unprofessional.