Cracking the Sat Code

By Ezra Bowen.

Of all the rites of passage faced by college-bound high school students, one of the most dreaded is the three-hour multiple-choice examination known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Prepared by the College Board and administered by the Educational Testing Service in the spring of junior year and the fall of senior year, the SAT is taken by 1.5 million students annually, and the results go to 3,100 institutions of higher learning. The purpose is to give admissions directors an objective measure of the students' ability as a corrective to variable grades from their schools. But the SAT has been a target of educators and laymen alike in the long-standing battle over the value of standardized tests. Now a new book subjects the exam to the most withering blast yet. In None of the Above (Houghton Mifflin; $16.95), Author David Owen charges that the SAT is badly conceived, badly written, easy to beat if you know how, and all but worthless as a measure of preparation for college.

Owen, 30, a free-lance writer and author of the 1981 book High School: Under Cover with the Class of '80, is sometimes indiscriminate and intemperate in his attack. He takes a swipe at just about everything that E.T.S. is and does. In addition, his criticisms of the SAT include the familiar but debatable contention that it is based on a white, upper-middle-class, suburban point of view, thus penalizing blacks and other urban minorities.

The most interesting chapters, however, detail Owen's charge that the SAT measures "primarily the ability to take E.T.S. tests." He contends that this ability can be cram-coached by methods having little to do with scholastic aptitude. As principal evidence, he offers the work of Testing Coach John Katzman, 25, whose four-year-old Princeton Review tutoring service has headquarters in New York City and branch offices in four other cities. Owen recounts that the Princeton Review and a few similar services, working from computer analysis of existing SATs, can boost students' SAT scores an average of 185 points (a perfect SAT mark is 1600; the national norm is 897, or 471 on mathematics and 426 on verbal skills). Katzman's top students, writes Owen, show average gains of 250 points. In singling out the Princeton Review, Owen gives scant attention to longer-established coaching services, like the 47-year-old Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center, based in New York City with branches in 120 cities, that make more modest claims of 100- to 175-point improvements.

The Princeton Review, which provides 20 lessons for $495, reveals that E.T.S. puts certain easy problems in identical places on successive tests; Katzman's graduates know those locations, with the answers. They also learn a "hit parade" of the 100 most commonly tested word definitions (among them: enigma, indifferent, apathy).

Review instructors warn that every SAT contains an unscored section of experimental, often difficult candidate questions for future tests. One such question asked for the antonym of the word imbibe, whose common definitions are to drink and to receive into the mind. The answer choices were (A) dissuade, (B) reward, (C) exude, (D) loosen bonds, (E) refuse help. According to Owen, only 13% of students taking the test marked E.T.S.'s answer, exude, which is the opposite of soak, an archaic definition of imbibe. Review students are taught to spot the experimental section by its heavy cargo of muddy puzzlers and are told to ignore it.

The Review's real secret, Owen maintains, amounts to code cracking; that is, mastering E.T.S.'s system for building an SAT and then turning that system to beat the test. A representative midrange SAT question is answerable by most bright students, eminently flunkable by slow ones, and something between for the middling muddler, whom the Review nicknames Joe Bloggs. Thus the square root of 4 is no good for the middle-to-hard portion of an SAT, since anyone may guess the right answer to be 2. But the square root of 9 is perfect: easy if you know your algebra (the answer: 3), hard if you don't, and about a 50% guessing shot for Joe, whose chances may be reduced by a deceptive, tempting answer that E.T.S. calls a "distractor." A typical distractor in the stickier part of a math section was set up by this question: A literary agency's editors read 4 out of every 20 scripts submitted. What is the ratio of unread to read scripts? The nice, easy-looking distractor, 5:1, is sitting right there for Joe to get burned on, and usually he does. The correct answer, of course, is 4:1. Owen passes on the Review prescription: in a hard portion, beware the easy answer. In an easy portion, grab it.

At the College Board, in New York City, Senior Vice President Fred Hargadon deplores what he calls Owen's "selective use of evidence" and unquestioning promotion of the Review (where Owen now teaches). Says Hargadon of None of the Above: "It wouldn't pass as a graduate paper." E.T.S. President Gregory Anrig particularly disputes the test-score gains reported in the book, saying that coaching usually produces increases of only 14 to 26 points. Many of the "tricks" that Katzman's Review claims to impart, says Anrig, are explained in a free E.T.S. booklet distributed in advance of the SAT. College administrators view the quarrel with general calm, noting that the SATs, however feared or valid, are just one element in admissions decisions. A few educators have suggested replacing the SATs with exams like the E.T.S. Achievement Tests, which measure knowledge rather than aptitude. Owen insists that the Review system could crack their codes too. "Any multiple- choice test built on a statistical model," he writes, "can be beaten."

With reporting by Cathy Booth/New York