New SAT Test Students' Patience

by Charlotte Tucker
Staff Writer
Mar. 16, 2005
Laurie DeWitt/The Gazette

Ned Johnson, president of PrepMatters in Bethesda, tutors Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School junior Rose Jaffe on the math portion of the SAT. Students taking the test Saturday were the first to experience a longer test with a new essay and harder math questions.

Parents and kids say exam is too long.

After months of speculation and hype, test preps and practice exams, students across the county got their first look at the revamped SAT Saturday and almost universally their response was the same: It was long.

Clocking in at more than four hours including breaks, the test demanded focus and endurance and left test-takers exhausted.

"My brain feels like it needs a rest," said Carolina van der Mensbrugghe, a junior at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.

The new SAT adds several sections, including an essay and more advanced math questions, and eliminates the analogy and quantitative comparison sections. Students can now achieve a high score of 2400 points rather than the old 1600 points.

Van der Mensbrugghe said she took a test-prep course each Saturday for the past few months, which helped allay some of her nerves about the test.

"I still felt pressure, but I wasn't afraid of it. I could use it to my advantage," she said.

The night before the test she listened to calming jazz and went out for sushi with her mom.

Eric O'Keefe, a Thomas S. Wootton High School junior also took a test-prep course, but he spent Friday night unwinding in a different way.

"I tried not to think about the test," he said. "I hung out with friends and recorded a demo for our [ska] band."

O'Keefe said he didn't have a problem with the essay, the addition to the test that has garnered the most attention recently.

"I thought the topics they give you were not challenging," he said, explaining that he wrote about the validity of majority opinion. "It's everyday thought. They make it so you have to be able to show how you can express your feelings or ideas about an issue, but the issue is not alien."

For many students, the biggest problem with the test was staying focused for such a long time.

"By the eighth, ninth and 10th section, you start spacing out," said Julie-Anne Spatz, a junior at Montgomery Blair High School who lives in Takoma Park.

Ned Johnson, the president of PrepMatters, Inc., a test prep company based in Bethesda, took the test Saturday so that he would know how to prepare his students.

"Content-wise, it was no big deal," Johnson said. "Any student who took a couple of practice tests should have felt familiar with the content of the test. The real problem was its length."

He said that while some of his students reported that the test started on time at 8:30 a.m. and wrapped up around 12:30 p.m., he didn't get out of the building until 1:20 p.m., and some students didn't get finished until after 2 p.m.

"It's nuts," he wrote in an e-mail interview Monday. "Stamina should not be the underlying factor of a reportedly meritocratic system."
Johnson said he ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a granola bar during the break. Next time, he said, he'd need a Coke as well to keep his energy up during what he called the "Bataan Death March of tests."

Some parents said they were aggravated by the additional stress heaped on their children by the new test.
"The anxiety over the SAT and getting into a college is rising every year, if not every month," said Nancy Leopold, the parent of two B- CC students and one of the founders of College Tracks, a volunteer- run program at the school that helps students with the college application process.

For students who don't feel that they did well on the test, all is not lost. They have until today to cancel their scores and colleges will never know they took the test.

But if they don't want to do that, they can also diversify their test portfolio.

Judy Towers, the college career information coordinator at Wootton, recommends students take a shot at the ACT, a college entrance exam with curriculum-based sections in English, math, reading and science. The ACT also includes an optional essay.

"They can always take both, but they don't have to send both to the colleges," Towers said. "If they send both, the college pretty much looks at the higher score."

But even with other options, students still felt pressure to nail the SAT.

Charlotte Garvey-Corbette was one organizer of a mock SAT test taken by about 300 students at Wootton in January.

"Kids were so anxious about taking the [expanded] test, we felt taking the practice test would help them feel more confident," she said. "Frankly, they seemed a little overwhelmed with both the added length and the essay."

Leopold agreed that the expanded test was both a mental and physical challenge for the students.

"The consensus was, it was a very, very long test," she said. "In reality, it's become harder for kids to show what they know because they're getting tired, dehydrated and hungry over the four hours of test taking. I'd challenge any adult to stay focused over that length of time."

Freed from the confines of the test, O'Keefe and his friends blew off steam Saturday afternoon.

"My friends and I made a raft [of large water jugs, duct-taped together] and I rode across a lake near my house."

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