Up Your Score (2 page)

Michael’s revision of the book enabled a generation of youngsters to follow in his footsteps at Harvard, but age eventually took its toll on him, too. His hair grayed, and he forgot who Zooey Deschanel was. Students reading
Up Your Score
were confused by his references to
The Cosby Show
and Vanilla Ice. The book was losing its edge. To keep the book fresh, the by-now creaking, wheezing
Up Your Score
crew decided that every two years they would bring in a guest author who would sweep away the cobwebs, add his or her own SAT strategies, and report on the latest changes to the test.

Grabbing his cane, Michael embarked upon a nationwide quest to find the next SAT genius. He met Lisa Exler, an
Up Your Score
disciple who had also used the book and earned a 1600. Lisa revitalized
Up Your Score
and gave it a much-needed feminine perspective.

Nonetheless, the inevitable happened. Even Lisa grew staid and stale. So Michael, now too old to search for fresh talent, convinced the publisher to hold a national contest to find the next guest author. Countless whiz kids submitted applications and many were exemplary. The finalists were given a series of horrific tasks that included marathon 24-hour practice testing and calculating pi to the 314th decimal.

Only two applicants made it through the grueling process: Hannah Bowen and Adam Jed, both of whom had used
Up Your Score
to achieve 1600s. Adam and Hannah
were
a dynamic duo, but before long, sections in the book like “Rush Scores by Pony Express” and “Slide Rule Tricks” became outdated. Another contest was announced on the
Up Your Score
website.

From the masses emerged Joe Jewell, the one destined to lead
Up Your Score
into the twenty-first century. Soon, however, Joe noticed his peers at college referring to him as ye olde
Master Jewell. Aged as he got, he didn’t totally lose touch; he went on to cofound his own test prep company.

A new search located Jason Abaluck and Smitha Prabhuswamy. These two multiple-choice marvels so comprehensively decimated the SAT that the ETS admitted defeat and
changed the test
! Janet Xu then rose up from the masses of forlorn students and defeated the reincarnation of the SAT . . . but the task was so straining, that afterward she completely forgot how to read. Luckily Jean Huang and Swetha Kambhampati magically appeared to save the day, but they eventually grew old and weary and were sent off to college to rest. The same fate befell our next test slayers, Ginger Jiang and Jarey Wang. Then Alan Hatfield bravely stepped forward to carry on the battle against the ETS. He fought valiantly on behalf of test-takers everywhere, but his brain finally gave out and he now spends his days lounging comfortably in a quiet dorm room. So we held a nationwide contest to find someone who was up to the formidable challenge of leading
Up Your Score
into the future. And guess what? We found a totally superheroic gal who scored an impressive 2400.

Hey everyone, I’m JaJa (pronounced like “Zsa Zsa,” as in Gabor), the guest editor of this brand-new edition of
Up Your Score
. The SAT is never a pleasant experience for anybody (if anyone in your class says they sort of enjoyed taking it, they’re lying). Trust me, I’ve been through the horrors of the SAT and ETS. I’m not saying that people don’t come out alive, but it’s been known to leave once-cheerful kids plagued with perpetual frowns. That won’t be you, though: you’ve made a wise decision in picking up this book. You have in your hands the hilarious, sarcastic, written-in-plain-old-English SAT bible. Really and truly, the SAT is just an extremely lame game designed by the ETS that is totally defeatable. So don’t be afraid. If anything, with this book as a shield, the ETS should be afraid of what you’re going to do to conquer the game.

Good question. The answer is, you don’t. You can choose not to read this book and halfway through the SAT have a nervous breakdown from which you never quite recover despite decades of psychiatric care, which will lead to all of your several marriages ending in bitter divorces that cost you every penny you make as a mediocre professional bowler, until your life is cut short by an agonizing disease for which they find a cure a week after no one comes to your funeral. Next question?

The SAT was developed in 1927 because colleges wanted an objective way of comparing students. It used to be that they had no way of knowing that Eggbert’s D average at Impossible High School was actually much more impressive than Betty’s B average at Easy Academy. Supposedly, the SAT gives an accurate measure of a student’s ability to do college work. Certain teenage review book authors think that it fails miserably in its attempt to do this, even in its “new” version, but the fact remains that it is a very important part of the college application process. Your SAT score can make the difference between acceptance to and rejection from a college.

Before the SAT, colleges had no way of knowing that Eggbert’s D average at Impossible High School was actually much more impressive than Betty’s B average at Easy Academy.

In March 2005, the College Board, which administers the SAT, revised it into a longer, harder test that requires takers to write an essay. The College Board claims “the new SAT improves the alignment of the test with current curriculum and institutional practices in high school and college.” Whatever. The truth, as we wizened test takers know, is that in 2001, the president of the University of California system—the College Board’s largest client—recommended that his colleges stop using the SAT as a basis for admission. The College Board couldn’t afford to lose the income from all those California test-takers, so voilà, a new torture system for the twenty first century was conceived. (Go California!)

The
old SAT I
was three hours long and contained only verbal and math sections. The
“new” SAT I,
introduced in March 2005, is three hours and 45 minutes long. It has 70 minutes of critical reading testing (two sections of 25 minutes and one section of 20 minutes), 70 minutes of math testing (same breakdown as verbal), and a new 60-minute writing test (a 25-minute essay, and 25-minute and 10-minute multiple-choice sections). Plus, there’s a 25-minute experimental section in either math, critical reading, or writing that won’t count toward your score. Only catch, you won’t know which section is experimental. (And, no, guessing which one is experimental isn’t a good idea.)

The SAT II tests cover individual subjects such as literature, foreign languages, history, math, and science. There used to be one for writing, but the College Board did away with it once they introduced the new test. Before they created the new SAT, the Educational Testing Service (the company that writes the tests) always pushed the SAT II Writing Test as the most important SAT II because it required an essay.

Note:
We usually refer to the SAT I simply as “the SAT.”

Each section of the test is scored on a scale of 200 to 800. So the perfect combined score is 2400 (math plus critical reading plus writing), and the score you really, really don’t want to get is a 600.

Well, that depends. First, you have to consider what your goals are. Some of you are reading this book because the NCAA rules require that you get a certain minimum score in order to be eligible to play on an intercollegiate team as a freshman. Some of you want to end up at Harvard so you’ll want to score in the 2300s on the SAT. Schools usually offer the SAT score range of the middle 50 percent of their freshman class to give an idea of what type of score they’re looking for. For instance, Columbia recently had a composite score range of 2150–2320.
Macalester College had a range of 1890–2190, and Lake Forest College had a range of 1580–1920. Usually, you can find this information on a college’s website.

And remember, these numbers are typical of the scores of the students entering these schools. They are not minimum requirements, nor do they guarantee admission.

Admissions officers consider many other factors. High school grades and courses, work experience, extracurricular activities, application essays, leadership qualities, the admissions interview, ethnic background, athletic prowess, legacy (having relatives who went to the school you are applying to), and many other things all have an impact on whether or not you get in. Although these other factors are important, your SAT score may be the most crucial. If you are president of every club in your school, the admissions officers may be so impressed with your extracurricular activities that they’ll accept you even if you scored noticeably below the school’s average SAT score. But if you don’t have legacy, your grades are ho-hum, and you have a boring list of extracurriculars, then you will need SAT scores well above the average. (For more on college admissions, see
page 323
.) Many admissions officers would try to deny this claim, but the admissions records show that if you have an SAT score above the average for the school to which you are applying, and there’s nothing flagrantly wrong with the rest of your application, then you will usually get in. While the other factors on your application are subjective, your SAT score is a big, fat, hairy, “objective”
number
. Even an admissions officer who claims that the SAT score is not particularly important is going to be subconsciously influenced by this number. It categorizes your application in the admissions officer’s mind as “smart kid” or “dumb kid.” It has an impact on the way an admissions officer interprets virtually everything else on your application.

A long time ago, we asked Jim Wroth, then a sophomore at Yale, what his combined math and verbal scores were on the SAT. He said 1760. When we responded that it’s impossible to score above 1600 (because it was at the time), he explained that he has Yale relatives who date back to the year 1760, so it didn’t really matter what his scores were.

If you’ve already taken the PSAT and you didn’t study for it, don’t read this. It will only depress you.

The PSAT follows a format similar to the SAT, but it supposedly contains fewer of the most difficult questions, and it’s only two hours and ten minutes instead of three hours and 45 minutes. As in the SAT, you’ll see math (two 25-minute sections), critical reading (two 25-minute sections), and writing (one 30-minute section). Quantitative comparisons and analogies from the old PSAT have been eliminated and short reading passages have been added. You won’t, however, see any of the third-year college preparatory math that will be on the SAT (though some of the questions will require higher-level skills than the old PSAT did). The PSAT’s writing section will mirror the SAT’s writing section, but the ETS is reserving the real torture and pain for the actual SAT:
There is no official essay on the PSAT
. They are
too
kind! Another difference is that, while SAT does not have a
P
as its first letter, PSAT does. Here’s why ...