Sounds like an oxymoron, right? But really, the SAT can be fun! Well no, that’s a lie. But let’s assume it’s true as we read these cool SAT facts!
Fun Fact #1: The SAT stands for…
… not a thing! The SAT is a pseudo-acronym. Like its siblings “KFC” and “A&M” at Texas A&M University, “SAT” appears to be an acronym, but officially it no longer stands for anything. Originally “SAT” stood for “Scholastic Aptitude Test” but was changed in 1990 to mean “Scholastic Assessment Test” to appease critics who claimed the test was not a measure of intelligence. Then, just three short years later, the letters officially lost their meaning when the name was changed to “SAT I: Reasoning Test,” again to appease critics who argued that the test did not accurately reflect school performance.
Fun Fact #2: The Texas Educational Miracle
One of the load-bearing walls of George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign was the so-called “Texas Miracle of Education,” which touted his successes in improving test scores throughout Texas during his tenure as governor. from 1995-2000. One bullet point on this list of educational phenomena was the fact that, between 1994 and 1995, SAT scores rose 100 points! Governor-wizard Bush waved his magic wand and made all the teenagers in Texas smarter! A miracle, indeed!
Well not really. In April 1995, the College Board decided to refocus the SAT due to the decline in the national average. The SAT was originally designed to produce an average score of about 1,000, but over the years, as more and more people took the test, the national average dropped about 100 points to 900. The new scoring system score artificially inflated the scores so that the national average would rise back up to around 1000. In reality, adjusted for the new center, SAT scores did not rise or fall significantly during Bush’s tenure as governor, but no one noticed. ; if you ask me, that is the real miracle.
Fun Fact #3: Californication
The University of California Public University System is the largest university system in the country, consisting of ten schools and about 160,000 undergraduates. In 2009, the UC system received approximately 350,000 applications from high school seniors, most of whom took the SAT at least once. Even if each of those applicants only took the SAT once (probably not the case), that would be about $16,450,000 for the College Board. You could probably buy a small country with that kind of money!
So in 2001, when the UC president announced a recommendation to drop the SAT as a required admissions factor, the College Board listened intently. President Atkinson questioned the validity of the SAT as an indicator of academic achievement and sparked a debate about the merits of standardized tests that ultimately led to a major revision process that began in 2001 and culminated in changes that were announced in 2005. The College Board added a writing section to the SAT, increased the maximum score from 1600 to 2400, removed the analogies from the critical reading section, and made the test a little harder overall (to decrease the number of perfect scores). . Struggling to reach your target score on the SAT? Blame California. Interestingly (and strangely), the UC system already required SAT II (subject test) writing scores in addition to regular SAT scores. One wonders how moving the writing section from the SAT II to the SAT I helped them assess students. With more precision?
