The Scholastic Test

The Scholastic Test

The scholastic aptitude test is a measure of difference that is standardized in the scholastic ability and achievements among applicants of undergraduates to the colleges of the United States. It is considered to be exceptionally accurate with a score prediction of 20 to 30 percent of the variance in grades of course in Freshman College despite the difference among the schools, in difficulty of the course, in the grading practices of the courses of professors, the efforts of the students, their moods and adjustment to college. The maker of scholastic aptitude test (SAT) is under criticism for purported biases but the social and historical analysis reveal the biases are not an inherent of the test quality; rather, they result from the way people use the test and from the inequities of the culture of America.

The test assesses the skills that the students have acquired over time and the skills that they need to be successful academically. This test allows colleges and universities to do comparison of applicants from different backgrounds of education. The newest embodiment of the scholastic aptitude test consists 3 hours and 45 minutes of writing, critical reading and mathematics with questions spread over 10 sections. It also has a 25 minutes essay that begins the test while a ten minutes grammar section wraps it up.  In the middle, the students go through 70 minutes each of critical reading and mathematics and face a 25 minutes of multiple-choices writing of mechanic questions. On top of that, the tests have a 25-minutes unscored section of experimentation which may include critical reading, mathematics or writing questions. The types of questions in the writing sections include identifying errors of sentences, improving the sentences and paragraphs. In the section of mathematics, it incorporates “grid-ins” in which the students are expected to generate their own answers to problems. In the critical reading section, it contains sentence completions and reading comprehensions for short and long passages.

The scholastic is a norm-referenced measure that incorporates both the speed and power components. The Education Testing Service Company that is hired by the College Board to administer the scholastic aptitude test do it in a way that only 50 percent of the students will answer the test appropriately to constitute the power test while only 80 percent of the students will complete it in the allotted time so as to add the factor of speed.

The history of the scholastic aptitude test suggests that its standardization sample and norms have evolved.............