SAT – Scholastic Assessment Test

SAT is a standardized test that is being conducted for college admission tests mainly in the United States. It is basically owned, published and developed by college board which a nonprofit organization in United States. When we go back to the history of SAT, it is to be noticed that it was formerly developed and published by educational testing service. The main striking figure of this test is that it is still examining. This test mainly tests the student’s readiness for college. It was very firstly introduced in 1926, although the names and scoring criteria so many times got changed. It was first called Scholastic Aptitude test and then finally after few years, it was named as Scholastic Assessment Test.

Who conducts this test? This SAT test is basically taken by high school juniors and seniors. The College Boardstates that student should have all the academic skills. It also states that the skills are the requirement which is basic and needed in the college life too so that the command over skills is important. Well! This test will enable a student, who is applying for an American institution, in maintaining his or her academic skills. Recently it has proved to be a very successful test for students who apply for foreign education.

What is the structure of SAT? SAT consists of three major sections

• Critical Reading
• Mathematics
• Writing

Timings associated with each trail! Each section receives a score on the scale of 200–800. All scores are multiples of 10. Total scores are calculated by adding up scores of the three sections. Each major section is divided into three parts. There are 10 sub-sections, including an additional 25-minute experimental or “equating” section that may be in any of the three major sections. The experimental section is used to normalize questions for future administrations of the SAT and does not count toward the final score. The test contains 3 hours and 45 minutes of actual timed sections. Most administrations (after accounting for orientation, distribution of materials, completion of biographical sections, and fifteen minutes of timed breaks) run for about four and a half hours. The questions range from easy, medium, and hard depending on the scoring from the experimental sections.

What are the main functions of each corresponding section?

Critical Reading section is mainly made up of three scored sections. It mainly consists of two sections which mainly consist of 25 minutes sections and a section which is of 20 min. It also involves a varied number of questions. It may also include sentence completions and questions related to short and long reading passages. All test aims to test the vocabulary reading abilities and particular all the language skills through this test. So that when a student will read he or she will not feel hesitated and distract.

In mathematics section, there is two kind of sections Quantitative and calculation section. It involves two sections. There are 25 min sections and one min sections as well. One of the entire sections is totally based on the multiple questions.

When it comes to the writing portion of the SAT test, there is a piece of paper in front of you. You need to write on that selected topic so that your skills may be improved fully. The essay subs core contributes about 28% to the total writing score, with the multiple choice questions contributing 70%. This section was implemented in March 2005 following complaints from colleges about the lack of uniform examples of a student’s writing ability and critical thinking.

What is the average marking for each section? A brief overview: In writing, there is an average score of 493 with 60 mints time duration. In this section the main focus is on the grammar usage and dictation.

As far as mathematics is concerned, the average score is 515 with the time duration of 70 minutes. The content involved in it is number and operations, algebra and functions, geometry, statistics, probability and data analysis.  And in critical reading, the average score is 501 with time duration of 70 minutes. The content of this test involves basically are vocabulary, critical reading and also the sentence level reading.