The granddaddy of all standardized tests, the SAT, is undergoing its first modification in over a decade, and this year’s incoming high school juniors have the good fortune, or bad luck, to be the inaugural test takers when it debuts in March 2005.

By de-emphasizing abstract reasoning and rote memorization, the new SAT will be more of a skills test featuring a new section on grammar and writing ability.

Bend High School student Kohleen Ervin, 16, who will be starting her junior year in the fall, said she welcomes the changes.

”For those who struggle with writing, it will be hard,” she said. ”But I have had some really good English teachers, and I feel they have prepared me well.”

Ervin said her teachers assign her regular SAT preparatory work during school and she plans to take a weekly SAT study class offered at the high school for $100. She also plans to take the PSATs in the fall and will take the SATs a second time during her senior year if she needs to.

The College Board, the company that administers the SATs, first announced changes to the test in June 2002, on the heels of an announcement by the University of California that it was considering dropping the test from its admission requirements.

The College Board has outlined the changes to the test on its Web site, www.collegeboard.com.

”It is a different test, but it is not a harder test,” said College Board spokeswoman Sandra Riley.

The underlying structure of the SAT will not change in a dramatic way. It will still consist of timed sections with mostly multiple-choice questions.

Analogies have been completely eliminated from the critical reading section, replaced by short reading passages. That means students will no longer need to memorize thousands of SAT vocabulary words.

In the math section, quantitative comparisons have been removed and some algebra has been added.

The changes have been made in order to ”more closely resemble the skills needed to succeed in college and in the workplace,” Riley said.

The most significant change in the SAT is the addition of an entirely new section on writing. It will be worth the same number of total points as the other two sections, 800 points, meaning a perfect SAT score will be 2,400 points instead of the recognizable 1,600 points.

The test will be extended by 45 minutes to accommodate the new section, pushing it to almost four hours long. And will be about $10 to $12 more expensive.

The new writing section will consist of multiple-choice questions in which students will identify grammar errors and improve sentences and paragraphs.

Students will also handwrite a 25-minute essay in which they will be asked to take a position on an issue.

The essays will be scanned and e-mailed to high school and college teachers across the country for grading. Two teachers will rank each essay on a scale of 1 to 6. If the scores differ by more than one point, a third person will resolve the difference. The scores will be added together for a high score of 12 points.

The essay will be graded based on a ”holistic approach,” taking into account various factors like ”complexity of thought,” ”substantiality of development,” and ”facility with language,” according to the College Board Web site.

Essays will be treated as first drafts, therefore, an essay with punctuation, grammar and spelling mistakes could still receive a top score, Riley said.

”Spelling errors will only count against you if it gets in the way of the reader understanding the essay,” she said.

Even though the essay will only account for around 10 percent of the overall test score, it is the aspect that students are feeling most anxiety about, according to a study by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, an educational services provider.

Anxiety about the changes to the SAT has caused some juniors to contemplate taking only the current version of the test, which won’t be discontinued until January 2005.

However, all the major test preparation companies are discouraging their students from taking the old version alone. They all agree that, at the very least, juniors should take the new version.

Kaplan goes one step further in recommending that juniors take both tests. ”These students have an unprecedented opportunity that nobody else will have,” said Jennifer Karan, director of SAT and ACT programs for Kaplan.

Kaplan surveyed the top 500 colleges and 80 percent said they will cherry-pick top scores from the old and new tests for the class of 2006. A student can play to their strengths and get the best overall score they can, Karan said.

But the College Board urges each student to contact their perspective colleges and inquire about their policies before they make a decision about the SATs.

Many colleges will be requiring a standardized writing test for admissions. The University of Oregon, for example, expects students seeking admission in the fall of 2006 to submit scores from the new SAT, said associate director of admission Brian Henley.

”Clearly, writing is an important skill for success in college and beyond,” he said. ”The new writing component on the SAT will give us an additional tool we can use to be sure that the students we admit have the ability to be successful.”

The essay will also help in identifying students who need extra help developing their writing skills and connect them to available resources, Henley said.

Oregon State University will require the new SAT scores and will not cherry-pick high scores from the old test, director of admissions Michele Sandlin said.

Portland State University and the Oregon Institute of Technology will also require the new SAT for the class of 2006.

There is some disagreement as to how important the SATs really are. Jennifer Karan from Kaplan states that getting a good SAT score is more important than ever before.

”More schools are placing a higher emphasis on SAT scores, because of fears of grade inflation,” she said.

Henley disagrees. ”The media tends to overemphasize the importance of SAT scores in the admissions process for the majority of colleges and universities in the country,” he said.

At the University of Oregon, a student’s SAT score is not even considered if they have a GPA over 3.25 and have completed the required high school course work, Henley said. For students with lower grades, the SAT is only one factor of many that is considered for admission.

”Others include strength of high school curriculum, difficulty of course work in the senior year and grade trends,” Henley said. ”We want to see if the student challenged him or herself while in high school.”

SAT scores alone never make or break an admission decision, he added.

David Jagernauth can be reached at 383-0375 or djagernauth@bendbulletin.com.