The March 10, 2007 SAT

Our Report

We have information on four SAT form codes administered on March 10, 2007: AEDA, AEQZ, BWDA, and BWQZ. 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 errors and general sentence construction, such as run-ons and fragments. This SAT featured a number of questions testing conjunctions, parallelism, false comparisons, misplaced modifiers, redundancy, and idioms. In the hardest Improving Sentences, archaic or unusual words may have confused some test-takers.

Student Response

Our students were generally optimistic about the essay prompts. Both SAT prompts addressed topics commonly discussed in high school English or history classes, making it easy to find literary and historical examples to use as support. Student comments about the multiple-choice questions reflected a feeling of optimism about the test; half of the students who answered our online survey thought they had found all the errors, while the other half felt they had found most of them but were stumped on just a few difficult ones. Despite these difficult questions, both low and mid-scorers shouldn’t have had too much trouble reaching their scoring goals by simply picking out the verb, pronoun, and sentence construction errors and ignoring the trickier idiom and modifier errors. The challenge for high scorers was to spot more of the hard-to-see errors, such as those questions that appeared late in each section.

 

SAT Reading Highlights

Thankfully, most sentence completions contained easily spotted clues, which made choosing your own word easy. However some of the vocabulary in the answer choices was difficult to understand, particularly when words' secondary meanings were tested. Although the language of the reading passages was occasionally difficult, the passages had clear main ideas that could be used to help interpret a hard-to-understand reference. Process of Elimination was a great tool even on these tough reading passages. Many answers could be eliminated because they were either never stated, or because the answer was too broad for the points being made in the passages.

Student Response

Despite the difficulty of some of the reading material in the test, a majority of students in our online survey felt the reading passages were easier than, or as difficult as, the ones found in their practice SAT tests. Students also commented on how boring they found the dual reading passage, but didn’t feel that it had affected how well they did on the test. Feedback from students has also indicated that many of our students felt that the vocabulary on Saturday’s test was more difficult or as difficult as that found on their practice tests.

 

SAT Math Highlights:

Students should have felt comfortable with most of the 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 skills. Algebra and geometry questions were plentiful and Plugging In was especially useful on the hardest of the questions. The SAT test featured traditional questions testing translation, averages, percents, and ratios. There were a number of geometry problems testing circumference, perimeter, area, and angle rules in triangles. We hope students remembered to skip around to find easier questions when they were presented with something they found challenging.

Student Response

Most students seemed to think the test wasn’t a terrible one. However, given that many of these questions had easy math but required careful reading, a bit of reasoning, and meticulous work, students needed to work carefully. In general, students who are aiming for a score under 650 reported finding their target number of questions with little difficulty. Students aiming for a score above 650 had a very good chance of doing so on this SAT test. Although these students needed to be careful on the easier questions and avoid trap or partial answers, they may well have felt that the more difficult questions weren’t as difficult as on practice SAT tests as they required less reasoning and mathematical skills and more organizational skills.

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?

How well the SAT is run by the test proctors can affect how confident you feel coming out of the test. Luckily, the majority of respondents had positive experiences. The test started on time for 65% of students, and 89% reported that their proctor was knowledgeable and friendly. In an interesting split, 50% of students were given a 5-minute warning before the end of each section, while the other 50% were not. Though warnings like this are not required of proctors, most will give you a warning if someone asks, so be proactive and request a warning!

How well prepared did you feel?

Most (67%) felt somewhat prepared, and 17% were very confident that they'd aced the SAT. A number noted how much more confident and relaxed they were than the other students in the room who didn't prep with The Princeton Review.

Overall, what did you think of the SAT Math?

More than half of our students (55%) thought it was mostly fine, with just a few tough questions here and there. Another 40% reported that they knew how to answer the majority of the questions. Only 5% reported having trouble meeting their scoring goals.

How about the SAT Reading?

While 69% 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.

What did you think of the SAT Writing?

54% of students surveyed felt confident about their essay and 65% used examples they had prepared in advance. On the grammar, the majority of students (58%) felt challenged by the multiple-choice questions, so if you came across a few that you weren't sure about, you aren't alone.