The May 5, 2007 SAT

Our Report

We have detailed information on four SAT form codes administered on May 5, 2007: AEDB, AEQY, BWDB, and BWQY. These SAT tests comprised the same multiple choice/grid-in sections but in different orders.

SAT Writing Highlights 

As our students have come to expect, most of the Error IDs and Improving Sentence questions tested verb or pronoun errors and general sentence construction, such as run-ons and fragments. ETS featured a number of questions testing noun agreement, modifiers and idioms. Other errors included verb tense, misplaced modifiers, false comparisons and redundancy.

Student Response 

Our students were generally optimistic about the essay prompts. Both SAT prompts addressed topics commonly discussed in high school English or History classes, making it easy to find literary and historical examples to use as support. The issues the prompts asked students to write about could be found in the positives and negatives of many technological achievements.

Student comments about the multiple-choice questions focused on the appearance of long-winded sentences. These sentences were often wrong and the right answer was almost always the shorter answer. All in all, our students found the grammar to be very approachable. Most students reported finishing the sections on time, and very few students reported getting stuck on the harder questions.

 

SAT Reading Highlights 

Thankfully, most sentence completions contained easily spotted clues, which made choosing your own word easy. However, some of the vocabulary in the clues was difficult to understand. When difficult vocabulary appeared in the answers on the easy and medium questions, the right answer was often the more familiar words. The language on all of the passages, except the long excerpt from a Victorian-age novel, was modern and tended to be clear. Process of Elimination was a great tool even on the toughest reading passages. Many answers could be eliminated because they were either never stated, or because the answer was too extreme given the tone of the passage.

Student Response 

Predictably, students complained about the length of the last SAT reading passage, as well as the back-to-back long single reading and long dual reading passages. Students reported feeling that fatigue was a major issue. Feedback from students has also indicated that many of our students felt that the vocabulary on Saturday's test was sometimes challenging but that they were able to use context to figure out some of the more difficult words.

 

SAT Math Highlights 

Students should have felt comfortable with most of the questions on the math section, although there were some difficult questions toward the end of each of the sections that required students to use their organizational skills. Algebra and geometry questions were plentiful and the Princeton Review technique of Plugging In The Answers was especially useful on the hardest of the questions. The test featured traditional questions testing translation, averages, percents and probability. There were a number of geometry problems; these tested volume, area, right triangles, and coordinate geometry. We hope students remembered to skip around to find easier questions when they were presented with something they found challenging.

Student Response 

Most students seemed to think the test wasn't a terrible one. However, given that many of these questions had easy math but required careful reading and logical analysis, students needed to work carefully. In general, students who are aiming for a score under 650 reported finding their target number of questions with little difficulty. Students aiming for a score above 650 had a very good chance of doing so on this SAT test. Although these students needed to be careful on the easier questions and avoid trap or partial answers, they may well have felt that the more difficult questions weren't as difficult as expected because they required less reasoning and mathematical skills and more organizational skills.

 

Student Survey 

The overall testing experience - how did it go for you? 

The majority of respondents had positive experiences during the May SAT test, with a scattering of the usual problems and distractions. The test started on time for 64% of students, and 86% reported that their proctor was knowledgeable and friendly. On this test, 71% of students reported getting a warning before the end of each section, which is great! Always ask your proctor to do this for you, since they almost never offer to do it on their own. One noticeable issue on this administration was breaks: a number of students reported that the proctor gave no breaks to keep students from discussing the test among themselves. 11% of students reported not getting breaks or not getting breaks of the right length, which is not a good trend for test takers. You are supposed to get three breaks! If you don't, write to the College Board to complain. They won't know there are problems unless students are proactive about informing them.

How well prepared did you feel? 

Most (73%) felt somewhat prepared, and 9% were very confident that they'd aced the SAT. Students reported a pretty wide range of distractions during the administration of the test (such as a marching band rehearsing outside, loud cheering from a baseball game, a proctor's cell phone that kept ringing, a proctor's chair breaking in the middle of the test, overzealous groundskeepers mowing grass right outside the classroom, and extremes of hot and cold in the testing rooms), but overall they were able to focus and adapt when the test threw something unexpected at them.

Overall, what did you think of the SAT Math? 

49% of students thought the math was mostly fine, with just a few tough questions here and there. Another 45% reported that they knew how to answer the majority of the questions. Only 6% reported having trouble finding enough doable questions to reach their scoring goals.

How about the SAT Reading? 

While 59% of respondents felt OK about the reading and were able to use context to figure out some of the harder content, 18% felt that tough language in the passages and challenging vocabulary throughout the test kept them from answering some questions. Students reported using POE (88%), answering questions in their own words (46%) and finding ETS trap answers to eliminate (43%) the most helpful.

What did you think of the SAT Writing? 

43% of students surveyed felt confident about their essay and 36% used examples they had prepared in advance. Compared to those on the March SAT, the May SAT essay prompts were reported to be a bit harder to work with -- several students reported the prompt "throwing [them] off" at first, and only 47% of students thought the prompts were easy to write on. On the grammar, the majority of students (54%) felt the multiple-choice questions were challenging but doable, and another 37% thought they were easy. Let's hope the ease of the multiple-choice questions balances out the more challenging nature of the SAT essay prompts!