Report on the June 2, 2007 SAT

Our Report

We have detailed information on four form codes administered on June 2, 2007 SAT: AEDC, AEQX, BWDC, and BWQX. These SAT tests comprised the same multiple choice/grid-in sections but in different orders.

SAT Writing Highlights  

As our students have come to expect, most of the Error IDs and Improving Sentence questions tested verb or pronoun errors and general sentence construction, such as run-ons and fragments. ETS featured a number of questions testing noun agreement, modifiers, and idioms. Other errors included verb tense, misplaced modifiers, false comparisons, and redundancy.

SAT Reading Highlights 

Thankfully, most sentence completions were written clearly, which made choosing your own word for the missing blanks easy. However, some of the vocabulary in the clues was difficult to understand. When difficult vocabulary appeared in the answers on the easy and medium questions, the right answer was often the more familiar words. The language on all of the reading passages was modern and straightforward, giving students of all reading levels a good shot at attaining their target scores.

SAT Math Highlights 

Students should have felt comfortable with most of questions on the math section, although there were some difficult questions toward the end of each of the sections that required students to use their organizational and reasoning skills. Algebra and geometry questions were plentiful. The test featured traditional questions testing translation, averages, percents and probability. There were a number of geometry problems testing volume, area, right triangles, and coordinate geometry. We hope students remembered to skip around to find easier questions when they were presented with something they found challenging.

Student Survey

Here are some highlights of what our students had to say about the SAT: 

The overall testing experience - how did it go for you? 

The majority of respondents had positive experiences during the June SAT test, with a scattering of the usual problems and distractions. A reported 68% of the survey takers claimed that their test began on time, and 76% claimed that their proctor was knowledgeable and friendly. In addition, 90% of the students reported their testing site to be clean and comfortable. However, only 66% of students reported getting warnings before the end of each section, which is great! Always ask your proctor to do this for you, since they almost never offer to do it on their own. 13% of students reported not getting breaks or not getting breaks of the right length, which is not a good trend for test takers. You are supposed to get three breaks! If you don't, write to the College Board to complain. They won't know there are problems unless students are proactive about informing them.

How well prepared did you feel? 

All things considered most students felt that the test was pretty fair. In response to that question, 79% of the surveyed students reported having been mostly prepared, and 5% were very confident that they'd aced the SAT. Students reported a pretty wide range of distractions during the administration of the test (such as a marching band rehearsing outside, construction being done outside, loud planes soaring overhead, music playing, police sirens, people screaming outside the testing room, and extremes of hot and cold in the testing rooms), but overall they were able to focus and adapt when the SAT test threw something unexpected at them.

Overall, what did you think of the SAT Math? 

44% thought the math was mostly fine, with just a few tough questions here and there. Another 47% claimed the Math questions were predictable and they knew how to answer them. Only 9% reported having trouble finding enough doable questions to reach their scoring goals. In addition, 76% of students surveyed reported understanding the wording of the Math questions.

How about the SAT Reading? 

While 53% of respondents felt OK about the reading and were able to use context to figure out some of the harder content, 21% felt that tough language in the passages and challenging vocabulary throughout the test kept them from answering some questions. Students reported using POE (82%), answering questions in their own words (42%) and finding ETS trap answers to eliminate (55%) the most helpful.

What did you think of the SAT Writing? 

39% of students felt confident about their essay and 36% used examples they had prepared in advance. Compared to those on the March SAT, the May SAT essay prompts were reported to be a bit harder to work with -- several students reported the prompt "throwing [them] off" at first, and only 46% of students thought the prompts were easy to write on. On the grammar, the majority of students (67%) felt the multiple-choice questions were challenging but doable, and 21% thought they were easy. Let's hope the ease of the multiple-choice questions balances out the more challenging nature of the SAT essay prompts!