Surprising Secret to SAT Success

More and more universities and colleges continue to decrease the importance of the SAT in their admissions process.  While all potential college students take either the SAT or ACT, most studies find that such scores have little implications to undergraduate success.  On the other hand, undergrads with higher high school GPA's and more extracurriculars tend to do better in college.  


The SAT has taken a beating in recent years.  The SAT that I took in high school was dramatically different then my parent's SAT.  The score scale had changed dramatically as money, grades, and SAT scores all saw great inflation over the decades.  Now students take a different SAT that I did at the beginning of the decade.  Students must write an essay worth an extra 800 points, making 2400 a perfect score.  Now, the SAT faces a new controversy.  


A high school student named Milo Beckman (14 year old prodigy) conducted a study of the SAT with his classmates.  He asked 115 fellow SAT-takers to count how many lines they wrote in their essay and to report their score.  You can probably guess his results.  Students who wrote longer essays received higher scores.  The strong corelation is not very surprising, but not great news for the College Board, who denies the coincidence.  An MIT professor has even confirmed his results- adding weight to the young man's study.  The more words you write on your SAT essay the higher the score.


But wouldn't smarter kids just write longer essays anyways?  Milo had the same thought.  He also compared the scores of students who took the test multiple times.  No one who wrote a longer essay received a lower score.  


Clearly, if taking the SAT, you should attempt to write as long an essay as possible.  But be sure to keep to the topic and pick one side of the argument.  Add more details not ambiguity.  The College Board says that the writing section predicts college success.  Maybe so.  Adding more BS to my papers did not hurt my chances of earning my Bachelor of Science degree.

Here is the ABC News story:



On a serious note, when I took the GRE to get into grad school I did poorly on the writing section.  I was deeply disappointed and committed myself to become a better writer.  At that point, I began going to internet blogs and newspaper forums to work on my writing and my ability to make an argument.  I also wrote a few letters to the editor as practice.  The effort paid off.  I wrote an article that appeared in the Winston-Salem Journal and received the second-highest score on the MCAT writing section 4 years later.  This blog continues my practice to improve my writing.  Hopefully, my articles will continue to improve.  To me the secret to better writing is to write more and write for a purpose.  Write about things you care about and try to convince other people of your positions.  We could all, SAT takers and the general public, afford to become better writers.  We just need to practice.