Interesting article in the NYT on some of the ways colleges are using the SAT essays. For instance, I didn’t know that college admissions offices can download a student’s SAT test essay from the College Board. I think it is a little troubling that a number of colleges said “they would use the SAT essay to evaluate whether students had received outside help on their application essays in cases where there appeared to be discrepancies in the applicants’ writing levels.” I think this brings up issues of genre (won’t a personal essay often be better because it is something about which the student feels passionately?), but also issues related to editing, revising, writing under timed conditions versus a drafting process, etc. I’m not sure that I agree with the argument that “basic writing and organizational skills should be consistent between the two samples.” But, in many ways, our work with the diagnostics functions under a similar assumption. I’d be interested to hear from others.
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CAC.OPHONY is a weblog on communication-intensive instruction at the college level and its implications for students about to face the challenges of writing and speaking publicly in professional settings. CAC.OPHONY is written and edited by the Fellows of the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute, Baruch College, City University of New York.
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Hi Jill!
I think you’re right. Some students will be assumed to be getting assistance with their formally-written and revised application essays, when their SAT essays (written under pressure and without the drafting or revision process they may normally follow) aren’t as well-written, organized, or edited. I get where the admissions folks are coming from. But I am not sure there’s an easy solution to the problem of cheating or “getting extra help.”
Perhaps I missed this in the article, but are the SAT essays written on a computer, or still long-hand? If it’s the latter, that in itself can affect one’s style a lot. I am so much more organized when I write on a computer, and it’s so easy then for me to be neat and correct errors. (Watch, this will contain massive glaring typos…)
I dread writing timed essays myself, dread them even more in longhand. Most professionals could not produce work of the same quality under these circumstances–most need to edit and revise (and I bet most need a second set of eyes to do it). Why do we expect these feats from students?
Also, although the diagnostics tool we use is not perfect, it does have the advantage of comparing apples with apples, since pre- and post-diagnostics are written under the same circumstances. So while we can’t really judge student writing ability from the diagnostics, to some degree, at least, we can compare their ability to do a similar task under similar circumstances. Unfortunately, the admissions folks in these articles are comparing apples and papayas.
Reply to Kate
That is troubling. It speaks to a pretty common fear, I think, that assessment can very easily function as surveillance. There was a whole to do a couple years ago over the fact that students used their SSNs as ID#s on the diagnostics when they were meant to be anonymous. What compounded the problem, by the way, was that since the diagnostic scores go into our database on the web, student SSNs were out there on the Internet where someone could ostensibly get their hands on them.
Reply to Mikhail
I’d disagree with the notion that downloading the actual essay written for the SAT as “troubling.” I’d want to champion the availability of the student’s writing sample instead of just the holistic number score.
The writing portion of the SAT has a host of problems (25 minutes to write an essay, egads!) plus the fact that multiple choice usage/grammar questions count for some 70% of the 200-800 points awarded…..
But those problems are different than the actual student essay being available. Sure is surveillance, but then isn’t one of the major points of portfolio assessment that it makes multiple drafts and multiple essays VISIBLE.
Sure, it’s surveillance, but I would applaud admissions folks actually looking at student writing rather than just a number score that *represents* the student’s writing ability.
Reply to larc