Followers of testing will recall that the SAT is being revamped to appease administrative heavyweights at the University of California who are so unhappy with minority students' scores that they recently threatened to drop the SAT entirely as an admissions requirement. Followers of testing will also recall that that this threat had to do with the particular double bind faced by college admissions officers in California: on the one hand, the use of racial preferences in college admissions is not legal in that state; on the other hand, UC scions are bent on ensuring that each year's entering class is a model of ethnic and racial diversity. The SAT in its old form was getting in the way of that goal for the simple reason that blacks and Hispanics tended to do much less well on it than whites and Asians. So, in 2002, the testing folks at the College Board announced plans to re-work the test, dropping, for example, the notoriously difficult verbal analogies section and replacing it with an essay section in which test-takers will have half an hour to respond to a quotation. The writing section of the SAT will be its own discrete unit; when the new SAT format is launched next year, the maximum score will no longer be the 1600 we are all accustomed to, but 2400.

In practice, this means that each year thousands of graders will be hired to score the estimated 2.5 million essays written by aspiring college students. These graders will in turn be trained to mark the essays as efficiently as possible--as in, they will be expected to devote no more than a minute or two to each essay. Essays will be graded "holistically," on a scale of 1 to 6, with due, if very brief, consideration given to "development of ideas, supporting examples, organization, word choice, and sentence structure."

The March Atlantic Monthly contains a pithy and telling piece on the new essay-oriented SAT format, the centerpiece of which is its coverage of how critics of the new test format from the Princeton Review have demonstrated the inadequacies of the College Board's grading template by subjecting the writing of a number of renowned authors to the College Board's "holistic" scoring criteria.

The results are at once hysterical commentaries on the inadequacies of the scoring criteria and disturbing indications of the failure of the College Board to recognize the serious problems inherent in their assembly-line approach to writing assessment.

Hemingway, for example, gets a 3: "Although it displays a solid vocabulary, Mr. Hemingway's essay lacks specific examples and clear topic sentences. Too undeveloped to be good."

Shakespeare gets a 2: "This essay is poorly organized, with only one paragraph (though, to Mr. Shakespeare's credit, the topic sentence does speak to what the rest of the sentences in his one paragraph are about). It is riddled with errors in syntax, incomplete sentences being the most noticeable problem. Although his supporting sentences are vivid in their description, they are vague and general, not true examples. And he unfortunately spells 'honor' with the extraneous 'u.'"

Gertrude Stein gets a 1: "Although Ms. Stein's essay is expressive, it's a bit flaky, lacking any semblance of structure, focus, or examples, and using non-standard syntax to boot."

The Princeton Review people conclude with a few choice tips for people who will be taking this version of the SAT:

To receive a high score a student should write a long essay of three or more paragraphs, with each paragraph containing topic and concluding sentences and at least one sentence that includes the words "for example." Whenever possible the student should use polysyllabic words where shorter, clearer words would suffice. The SAT essay will not be a place to take rhetorical chances. Flair will win no points; the highest-scoring essays will be earnest, long-winded, and predictable.