Everything with an "A" and a "T" are Evil. Proof? SAT, ACT, MCAT, PCAT.

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I'm fairly certain we've all taken either the SAT or ACT (some of us had to do both, sadly). Not only is it annoying that SAT stands for "SAT" now (it used to mean something, not anymore), but the scores are useless later in life. Don't get me wrong, they'll get you in college, but past that nobody will ever care.



 A part of the SAT and ACT that is burned into my mind was the horrid essay portions. I'm not a fast writer (atleast, not if I want it to be legible) so having to write essays on minitopics in short succession really burned me. Anyways, that's why I'm excited that this article is being circulated around the web. Lee Perelem, a writing professor at MIT, looked at a bunch of past SAT essays and found an interesting trend. The essay's content was a very small factor, the majority of high scoring essays used a lot of words, especially big and unfamiliar words. Noticing this trend he jokingly tells students to just write as many words as you can that you can vaguely relate to the subject- bonus points if you include a quote. And no, the quote doesn't have to be related.

SAT essay graders aren't paid very much, a lot are English teachers looking for some money during the summer, and are expected to sort through dozens of essays per hour. You obviously can't accurately grade for quality, content, and writing theme under these conditions. This is why it should be changed, completely overhauled.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/03/13/the-man-who-killed-sat-essay/L9v3dbPXewKq8oAvOUqONM/story.html?event=event25