Preparation for SAT : March 12

Many parents and their high school kids throughout the nation are now
canceling all funs of their life to prepare for the SAT exam which is
appearing in its new format on March 12th. What are new this time?

Starting this year students will get one score (between 200-800) each for
math, critical reading and writing; a perfect score is now 2400 :

o Mathematics: There will be more emphasis on graphs and visual
interpretation and representation of data. Concepts like notation of
function and exponential growth will be tested and there will be some
questions from higher level, Algebra II. Quantitative comparisons, which
used to count for 25 percent of the math score, are taken out of the test.

o Critical Reading: This is a new format of the verbal portion of the test.
We think no student will complain about new changes in comprehension
test: in addition to traditional long passages for comprehension questions,
there will also be shorter passages to read. No more "Analogies" but
probably you cannot escape it. It might appear in some other format in,
say, some comprehension questions.

o Writing. This entirely new section is generating lot of anxieties among
young minds and adult minds of their parents as well. The "essay" part
seems to be the greatest headache for most: But it will count for only 30
percent of the writing score. The rest would be 49 multiple-choice
grammar questions. The multiple choice questions will ask students to
identify errors, and the best ways to improve sentences and paragraphs.
We think grammer questions will be more challenging part to students
throughout the nation where, unlike in UK, literature is given more
emphasis than nitty-gitty details of correct construction of language.

The concerned students must know that "Essay" constitutes only about
one-tenth of the whole score and test-time. Students will tackle the essay
first, for 25 minutes. After that, they'll have three hours, 20 minutes to go
for the rest of the Writing section and other 2 sections.

Practicing is very important and if you spend money to go to a
preparatory class, they may just make your kid to do that. A free,
full-length practice test is available at CollegeBoard.
For fun ... parents may also try that!