2010 Offseason Wheeling and Dealing

[tomterp]

SAT scores are totally different now, from what I hear.

They grade on a curve now.  Back in the day, you had to answer every question correctly to get an 800.  Now, you can miss several and still get the same grade.   I wouldn't be surprised if the questions weren't easier too.

[The Chief]

It's three-part now as well, isn't it?

[tomterp]

It's three-part now as well, isn't it?

Not sure.

[cmdterps44]

It's three-part now as well, isn't it?

Math, English and an Essay. if thats what you mean. Thats how it was when I took it 4 years ago.

[KnorrForYourMoney]

It is three parts now.  It has a writing section, and it kept verbal and math.  The questions are easier - the test is dumbed down by all accounts.  The scores are out of a best-possible 2400 rather than 1600.

[The Chief]

Yeah that's what I thought...  how can an essay be consistently and objectively assigned a standardized point value?

[KnorrForYourMoney]

I don't know, but the essay was the weakest part of my SAT, so I'll concur with your disdain for it. I was extremely brief, which probably worked against me, but I wasn't expecting that hot air would be more important than succinct points and substance.

[Nathan]

Yeah that's what I thought...  how can an essay be consistently and objectively assigned a standardized point value?

Yeah, that's stupid.  My sister jut took the new one and the essay part is basically a joke.  I think more and more colleges are looking less and less at SAT scores as a basis for admission.

My "old" score in the mid 1300's worked well enough to get me in though.

[PatsNats28]

math and english, doesn't sound too bad. i'm good at both. i will fail at any science-related problems though.

[houston-nat]

Science is only on the ACT. However the SAT English usually has a passage of science-lit where they ask questions about whatever science the passage talks about.

Basically on the SAT, after about the 1400 range your score is pure luck of whether the questions happened to ask about vocab words / math formulas that you know or not. The essays are graded using who-knows-what criteria; they ask you a silly question and then dock you for any inability to overcome its silliness. My essays on the SAT, ACT and GRE have been given fairly mediocre scores; after all they have no way of knowing that I am a professional writer with a dossier of about ~40 student newspaper columns, ~30 magazine pieces and ~25 classical CD reviews published in an online daily, only that I wrote essays which answer the question as efficiently as possible without betraying too copiously my contempt for the abstruse blandness of the question.

[UMDNats]

The SAT sucks. I did mediocre on it, but I got a 32 on the ACT. Owned that nag.

I agree with houston about the essay. It's stupid.

[HalfSmokes]

As one of my Ploy Sci professors used to say, just "vomit on paper" (he used to hate long essays, probably because he was too lazy to grade them), there is a direct correlation between length and score

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html?_r=1

  ON EDUCATION
SAT Essay Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors
By MICHAEL WINERIP

Published: May 4, 2005


AMBRIDGE, Mass.

IN March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did doctoral work on testing and develops writing assessments for entering M.I.T. freshmen. He fears that the new 25-minute SAT essay test that started in March - and will be given for the second time on Saturday - is actually teaching high school students terrible writing habits.

"It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the longer the essay, the higher the score," Dr. Perelman said. A man on the panel from the College Board disagreed. "He told me I was jumping to conclusions," Dr. Perelman said. "Because M.I.T. is a place where everything is backed by data, I went to my hotel room, counted the words in those essays and put them in an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop."

In the next weeks, Dr. Perelman studied every graded sample SAT essay that the College Board made public. He looked at the 15 samples in the ScoreWrite book that the College Board distributed to high schools nationwide to prepare students for the new writing section. He reviewed the 23 graded essays on the College Board Web site meant as a guide for students and the 16 writing "anchor" samples the College Board used to train graders to properly mark essays.

He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.
 

[I can Throw]

Are we talking about SAT v ACT because of ....

Between the new "stats" and this, I'm going to have to go back to school.

[houston-nat]

Are we talking about SAT v ACT because of ....

Between the new "stats" and this, I'm going to have to go back to school.

JCA should do a podcast series explaining baseball stats.

[KnorrForYourMoney]

As one of my Ploy Sci professors used to say, just "vomit on paper" (he used to hate long essays, probably because he was too lazy to grade them), there is a direct correlation between length and score

Ugh, yeah, that couldn't be more true with the SAT essay.

I wish I would've known that.  I was conditioned to be concise by my U.S. History teacher.  He was a real no b.s. guy and liked meat and potatoes.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

JCA should do a podcast series explaining baseball stats.

Gee, are my posts that bad?  I really don't do anything creative. I just find something interesting on another cite and put it in here for discussion. 

[PANatsFan]

Gee, are my posts that bad?  I really don't do anything creative. I just find something interesting on another cite and put it in here for discussion. 

One could always take the RSS feed of JCA posts, feed it into a PDF, and then have one's kindle read them out loud like a podcast.

Don't worry, I don't do this

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Post 1669, baby!  sounds either like a good day to burn a witch or an old Traci Lords scene.

[houston-nat]

Gee, are my posts that bad?  I really don't do anything creative. I just find something interesting on another cite and put it in here for discussion. 

Bad? I love them! Otherwise I wouldn't listen to the podcasts.

[PANatsFan]

Bad? I love them! Otherwise I wouldn't listen to the podcasts.

[sportsfan882]

Bill Ladson Tweet: I just learned the #Nats are sending scouts to Monroe, La. to watch RHP Ben Sheets throw Tuesday.

[cmdterps44]

Bill Ladson Tweet: I just learned the #Nats are sending scouts to Monroe, La. to watch RHP Ben Sheets throw Tuesday.

Good to know. Id like to have a guy of his caliber in our rotation.

[PatsNats28]

Bill Ladson Tweet: I just learned the #Nats are sending scouts to Monroe, La. to watch RHP Ben Sheets throw Tuesday.

In the old days, if we sent scouts to watch someone, we'd only have half a scout left (or one scout if we sent the 0.5 scout)

[Lintyfresh85]

In the old days, if we sent scouts to watch someone, we'd only have half a scout left (or one scout if we sent the 0.5 scout)

Ah yes, 2009 was such a different time.

[houston-nat]

Of course, this is Bill Ladson, so he might be using "scouts" to mean "a scout and some other guy," or something.