SAT Reasoning Test Score Trend 2006-2008

To all of you who just sat for SAT yesterday, all the best! Hope that it would be your best attempt!

Came across this blog post from College Confidential.

It shows the total number of applicants who are getting 750 to 800 for SAT each subject, as well as 700 to 749 for each subject.

Critical Reading (Number of Candidates with 750 to 800)
2006 - 25,944
2007 - 28,366 (Up 9.3%)
2008 - 24,569 (Down 13.4%)

Mathematics (Number of Candidates with 750 to 800)
2006 - 32,800
2007 - 35,136 (Up 7.1%)
2008 - 40,466 (Down 15.1%)

Writing (Number of Candidates with 750 to 800)
2006 - 17,510
2007 - 19,814 (Up 13.2%)
2008 - 22,035 (Down 11.2%)

Critical Reading (Number of Candidates with 700 to 740)
2006 - 43,049
2007 - 46,128 (Up 7.2%)
2008 - 45,360 (Down 1.7%)

Mathematics (Number of Candidates with 700 to 740)
2006 - 62,959
2007 - 54,108 (Down 14.1%)
2008 - 56,755 (Up 4.9%)

Writing (Number of Candidates with 700 to 740)
2006 - 37,848
2007 - 39,725 (Up 5.0%)
2008 - 41,332 (Up 4.0%)

It is interesting to see this, as total spots in all Ivy League + Stanford + MIT added up is not even 20,000, so if SAT is the only main indicator, then everyone who got in would be higher than 750. So, this further proves that they look at various indicators and not just SAT score.

Good Luck!
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SAT2 Score Analysis (Using Thailand Case Studies)

It's 2am. I would stop reading essays for now first. I know this means that for some of you, your essays feedback would be delayed by 1 day, but my brain is tired after reading essays for the past 4 hours. So, would do this for the rest of the night. :) (Not long more, before I called it a night).

Today, December SAT Reasoning Test/SAT Subject Test results were out. And there were happy and sad moments.

Thinking of how I should synthesize the importance of SAT Reasoning Test and SAT Subject Test scores, I decide to analyze it this way using results from the Thai scholars. You can find their scores here .

What I would do is that I would analyze based on the average score for those who get admitted, wait listed and rejected for each of the main universities.

Harvard University
Admit (2 students):- CR (665), Math (800), Writing (685) Essay (10), SAT2 (2400).
Wait List (2 students):- CR (585), Math (795), Writing (605) Essay (8.5), SAT2 (2350)
Reject (2 students):- CR (515), Math (790), Writing (575) Essay (8), SAT2 (2365)

Princeton University
Admit (1 student):- CR (710), Math (800), Writing (710) Essay (10), SAT2 (2400)
Reject (1 student):- CR (570), Math (800), Writing (640) Essay (8), SAT2 (2400)

Yale University
Admit (3 students):- CR (667), Math (800), Writing (657) Essay (9.67), SAT2 (2400)
Reject (5 students):- CR (570), Math (770), Writing (586) Essay (8.2), SAT2 (2248)
(there is one candidate who got rejected with SAT2 of 1960, if remove that candidate, the average for rejected for SAT2 is 2320.

Columbia University
Admit (7 students):- CR (569), Math (796), Writing (584) Essay (8.57), SAT2 (2347)
Wait List (6 students) :- CR (505), Math (787), Writing (533) Essay (7.33), SAT2 (2345)
Reject (2 students):- CR (455), Math (760), Writing (505) Essay (7.5), SAT2 (2180)

Cornell University
Admit (16 students):- CR (539), Math (785), Writing (568) Essay (8.5), SAT2 (2348)
Wait List (2 students):- CR (465), Math (780), Writing (510) Essay (6.5), SAT2 (2260)
Reject (11 students):- CR (477), Math (758), Writing (507) Essay (7.54), SAT2 (2205)

Brown University
Admit (3 students):- CR (543), Math (797), Writing (607) Essay (7.67), SAT2 (2370)
Wait List (6 students):- CR (519), Math (792), Writing (542) Essay (7.83), SAT2 (2318)
Reject (2 students):- CR (515), Math (740), Writing (535) Essay (8.5), SAT2 (2275)

Dartmouth College
Admit (5 students):- CR (600), Math (794), Writing (634) Essay (8.6), SAT2 (2356)
Wait List (1 student):- CR (530), Math (680), Writing (520) Essay (7), SAT2 (1910)

University of Pennsylvania
Admit (10 students):- CR (585), Math (792), Writing (599) Essay (8.6), SAT2 (2369)
Wait List (2 students):- CR (525), Math (770), Writing (570) Essay (8), SAT2 (2300)
Reject (3 students):- CR (487), Math (793), Writing (510) Essay (7.33), SAT2 (2227)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Admit (3 students):- CR (693), Math (800), Writing (727) Essay (10), SAT2 (2400)
Wait List (1 student):- CR (610), Math (800), Writing (580) Essay (8), SAT2 (2400)
Reject (11 students):- CR(551), Math (791), Writing (568) Essay (8), SAT2 (2359)
(1 of the rejected candidates score 2070 in SAT2, if taken that out, average SAT2 for rejected is 2386.)

Stanford University
Admit (7 students):- CR (633), Math (792), Writing (650) Essay (9), SAT2 (2400)
Wait List (1 student):- CR (600), Math (800), Writing (580) Essay (8), SAT2 (2400)
Reject (22 students):- CR (512), Math (777), Writing (532) Essay (7.78), SAT2 (2303)
(2 of the rejected candidates score 1910 and 2070 respectively, if taken those two out, average SAT2 for rejected is 2339.)

I know that these 10 universities are not complete representation, but I would stop here. If any of you could help me to churn out this stats for other universities, that would be much appreciated. I would quote you for your calculation.

Some points to note:-
1. Do note that the figure above are all average, which means technically about half of them got better than that score and half got worse than that score.
2. We see some correlation of higher SAT and admit rate, but it is not conclusive.
3. I would safely say that SAT2 is much more crucial. Do note the high score of their SAT2.
4. English score for Thais are a little lower, but their SAT2 are impressive. That's the case for SAT2 for most other students too. So, students from Malaysia need to buck up on this.

Please feel free to quote these figures to share with others.

Am hoping to conduct a similar analysis for Malaysia come this April 2009.

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Would encourage any of my blog readers to share with me any event that you come across. As long as the event/activity/initiative is education/charity/youth oriented and is not-for-profit, I would be more than happy to post it to share!

New SAT Score Choice Policy

This article by Newsweek is definitely self explanatory. It is about Score Choice policy for SAT. Students planning to apply for Class of 2014 for Cornell, Stanford, UPenn, Pomona and USC may not appreciate this news positively!

Would post it for your review.

This is fully quoted from Newsweek .

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No. 2 pencils ready? Today's question: will the College Board's new Score Choice policy for the SAT, which lets students hide bad scores in their College Board records from universities, (a) lower anxiety for high-school students; (b) raise anxiety for some when they discover that a loophole allows admissions offices to override the policy; or (c) infuriate some colleges? The answer is all of the above—and the already pressurized universe of students, colleges and helicopter parents is in turmoil over it.

Until now, students who took the SAT more than once had to send all scores to admissions committees. Score Choice abolishes that, effective for high-school seniors applying next September. Announced by the College Board earlier this year with the goal of "reducing student stress," Score Choice permits students to send only their best overall score from a given test date. So students can take tests repeatedly with no apparent penalty. Indeed, according to guidance counselors, many high-school juniors are signing up to take next month's SAT, just as they did this month. The juniors are doing so because they figure it's a free swing at a good score, and they can always re-take the test in March or May.

There's one catch. Colleges can opt out of Score Choice and require applicants to report every SAT score. And some colleges have now decided to do so, NEWSWEEK has learned. Stanford, Cornell, Pomona, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California told NEWSWEEK their applications next fall will demand all scores. Other elite schools, including Harvard and the University of Chicago, say they'll honor Score Choice; many, such as Yale and Princeton, say they've yet to decide. A few, such as Colby College and Williams, say Score Choice is irrelevant to them because they already cherry-pick the highest individual math, verbal and reading scores from among multiple tests. (The top score on each part is an 800, and a 2400 is perfect.) Because Score Choice may wrongly suggest to applicants that colleges look only at an entire test given on a single date, says Steve Thomas, admissions director at Colby, "students may be doing themselves a disservice" by suppressing scores that could be beneficial.


Score Choice once again puts the College Board in the crosshairs of an endless debate over testing. Opponents of the new policy say it's financially motivated. The SAT has been losing market share to the ACT, another admissions exam, which already has a version of Score Choice. The Board denies the motivation, though an internal e-mail from February, obtained by NEWSWEEK, suggests otherwise. Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT, referred to "less kids taking SAT," thereby "threatening the viability of the program itself."

Officials at many elite schools excoriate Score Choice. In an e-mail discussion among them earlier this year, Pomona's admissions dean worried "how much more financially well-off kids could play the selection- and score-reporting game." Rice's admissions director mocked the College Board for professing to be motivated by concern over students. "I've never known the CB to cave into pressures from students," she wrote to colleagues. "What spin."

But other admissions officials thought the critics "do protest too much." "Railing against" Score Choice, wrote Bill Conley of Johns Hopkins, implies top schools "really are dissecting scores at a level we publicly claim not to." If "a student submits a single best sitting of 2320," he asked, does anyone really care "how low were her other score sets?" In an admissions subculture fixated on the SAT, the unkind answer would seem to be yes.

With Samantha Henig and Matthew Philips




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Would encourage any of my blog readers to share with me any event that you come across. As long as the event/activity/initiative is education/charity/youth oriented and is not-for-profit, I would be more than happy to post it to share!

ProProfs.com - Another SAT Resource

Thanks to Kenneth Hiew for highlighting this site. It seems to me a pretty good site for those who want to prepare for SAT!

It has a SAT Educators and Students wiki too, where you can help to contribute towards it.

Check it out at ProProfs.com



-----
Click here to read more of Chen Chow's posts

Would encourage any of my blog readers to share with me any event that you come across. As long as the event/activity/initiative is education/charity/youth oriented and is not-for-profit, I would be more than happy to post it to share!