As discussed last week, the comments about the perfect-scoring SAT essays published in the New York Times made me wonder whether bloggers could do any better. On the plus side, bloggers write all the time, of their own free will. On the minus side, they don’t have to work under test conditions, with a tight time limit and a specific question to answer.
Because we’re all about a rigorous scientific approach here at ScienceBlogs, we’ll settle this the modern way: with an Internet contest. Thus, we now present the Blogger SAT Challenge.
(“We” in this case is me and Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily. Dave did most of the work, setting the test up in SurveyMonkey. I just consulted.)
Full instructions are below the fold, but the basic deal is simple: Follow the link at the bottom of this post, and you have twenty minutes to complete an SAT-style essay. When the contest is over, we’ll put the resulting essays up (anonymized, of course) for peer review– that is, rating by other bloggers. We’ll even try to recruit some English types to grade them like real SAT essays, so you can find out just how your writing stacks up to that of the college-bound students of today.
I warn you: it’s harder than you might think. If you think you’re up to it, click through and follow the link to the Challenge. Otherwise, go stick some meat products to a domestic animal, or something.
The New York Times recently published sample top-scoring essays from the new written component of the SAT test in order to show the type of work that was likely to score highly. Several bloggers, as well as the Times itself, have noted that the writing isn’t exactly compelling. So here’s the question: can you do any better?
We’re especially interested in finding out if bloggers, because of their regular practice in short-form writing, might be able to do better than our nation’s best and brightest high school students. So, without further ado, we present the Blogger SAT Challenge. We’ve prepared a (relatively) controlled environment where our victims volunteers can respond to a sample SAT question.
Then the test will be scored in up to two ways: (1) ideally, if we get enough volunteers, we’ll grade the test according to SAT guidelines, (2) we’ll create a special blog where our readers will rate the essays on the 6-point SAT scale. We’ll then analyze the results to see how bloggers compare to college-bound highschoolers.
You can take the test at your leisure, but there are a few rules:
1. Don’t reveal the question until we’ve closed the test (at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, September 20). You don’t want to give your competitors an unfair advantage, do you?
2. You will have just 20 minutes from the time you click on the link below to complete your response (actually we’re giving you 21 minutes so that you have a chance to read the instructions and fill out the identifying information). There won’t be a clock visible on the test page, but you are being timed, and essays that go over the limit will not be scored. Yes, this is less than the 25 minutes that the highschoolers had, but they also had to handwrite their essays, so we think is the fairest compromise.
3. The text box that our software provides is rather cramped, so you may want to compose your response offline using a text editor, then copy and paste your response. Just make sure you leave the survey window open while you work.
4. You will have a chance to eliminate your essay from consideration after you complete your response. But please, for science’s sake, use this option sparingly. We promise not to identify the authors of the essays.
5. However, if you’re pleased with your work, we will provide a way for you to link to it from your own blog after the study is complete. You’ll even get a nifty badge that you can post on your blog to proclaim your madd writing skilz. But don’t reveal your answer until we let you know it’s okay, after scoring is complete — we don’t want to bias any of the judges.
Click here to start. Timing begins immediately
Oh, and one more thing: we *do* need volunteers, preferably college English teachers, to help score the exams. So, if you’re interested in that, please let us know, either via email or in the comments.
“on the pus side”? Hope that’s not on the test
(that’s right up there with the classic newspaper typo of dropping the “l” from “public”)
I grade SAT essays as part of my work for a prep service. I stand ready if needed.
Whoa! Where are the special dispensations for the handicapped, autistic, illiterate, addicted, sub-statured, obese, non-Anglophonic, traumatized, single mothered, economically disadvantaged, keyboard-challenged, jocks, Officially Sad, flat out stupid, and other privileged minorities?
ÎίÏÏε ιÏÏοÏικÏÏ Î»ÎµÏ ÎºÏÏ Î±Î³Î³Î»Î¿ÏαξÏνικÏÏ ÏÏοÏεÏÏανÏικÏÏ ÎºÎ±ÏαÏιεÏÏÎ®Ï ÏÏν λαÏν ÏÎ¿Ï ÏÏÏμαÏοÏ, especially with that time thingie. Robust self-empowered, proud African cultures were never and will never be enslaved by clocks. Îκεί, ÏÏÏ Ïο ÏÏ Î¼ÏαθείÏε?
That was irritating.
I used to write more, back before meliorating Big Apple innumeracy was the day job, and I never dashed off an expository essay in less than an hour. For me, essay questions on timed tests require pre-potted, stereotyped verbiage to truss a structure of facts and arguments collected long in advance of the question proper. To make the leap from a novel question to a clear line of thinking, making use of witty reference and apposite language, and correcting grammar, spelling, and usage for clarity and flow in less time than a Simpsons Episode is preposterous.
“on the pus side”? Hope that’s not on the test
Whoops. Fixed, now.
I grade SAT essays as part of my work for a prep service. I stand ready if needed.
Thanks. As of mid-day yesterday, the turnout wasn’t too impressive (two entries other than me and Dave), but maybe we’ll pick up some more over the weekend.
I used to write more, back before meliorating Big Apple innumeracy was the day job, and I never dashed off an expository essay in less than an hour. For me, essay questions on timed tests require pre-potted, stereotyped verbiage to truss a structure of facts and arguments collected long in advance of the question proper. To make the leap from a novel question to a clear line of thinking, making use of witty reference and apposite language, and correcting grammar, spelling, and usage for clarity and flow in less time than a Simpsons Episode is preposterous.
Yeah, it was pretty difficult. What I wrote absolutely sucked– I may not even claim it. It’s a really short amount of time, and I’m way out of practice.
I started thinking about this the other day, and realized that the last time I took a timed essay test was in May of 1993. The last time I took a timed exam of any kind was probably 1995.
There are some skills involved that have definitely atrophied, even if I do spend more time writing now than I did then.
I did mine late yesterday. I have no idea how good or bad it is because I have done my best to erase it from my mind. I’ll be lucky to recognize it when they’re done.
As for timed essay tests, the last one I took was 1987. Since then, all the tests I’ve taken were either multiple choice or take home style (which required a lot of writing but not timed).
Of course, I’ve never really been a good writer. I’m too lazy to do better than “good enough to get the point across”.
I just submitted mine, and I did terribly. Short, vague, unconnected, uninteresting, ugh. I looked at the prompt and completely blanked. I traditionally did timed essays well in high school–including dragging Oliver Cromwell quotations into “summer vacation” essays–but apparently I’ve lost that particular skill.
I did mine at work on Friday, and I’m full of excuses as to why it sucks. Like everyone else, apparently.
I’ll stand by mine a little bit more, though, and say it would have been fine if I hadn’t spent the first 10 minutes or so just trying to put myself in an essay-writing frame of mind. Actual writing time on mine was 11 or 12 minutes, I think.
“Îκεί, ÏÏÏ Ïο ÏÏ Î¼ÏαθείÏε?”
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I just did mine. It sucked, period. I always hated writing that kind of essay. Mine ended up stupid or pretentious or both.
Of course, sometimes a reminder of what school was like is a good thing.
(We don’t have SATs here in Australia but there are similar tasks thoughout high school.)
Perhaps one of the reasons you haven’t gotten that many essays is that once you have finished typing your essay into the little box and click on “NEXT>>” (which is the only place I see to click on), you get a “The page cannot be displayed” error. I was pretty upset about that, but at least I’d had the forethought to copy/paste the final essay back into a Notepad file so I wouldn’t lose it (this kind of stuff has happened to me in online surveys before.) I don’t know whether that means I went longer than 20 minutes, or whether it just was an error. Anyhow, after the challenge is over, can I post that essay on my LiveJournal weblog? I thought I got on a roll and made some pretty good points. *pout*
Perhaps one of the reasons you haven’t gotten that many essays is that once you have finished typing your essay into the little box and click on “NEXT>>” (which is the only place I see to click on), you get a “The page cannot be displayed” error.
I’m very sorry about that. My guess would be that you were the victim of a temporary web hiccup, but I really couldn’t say.
The software does log IP addresses, and is supposed to prevent you from re-taking the challenge at the same computer, so you may not be able to resubmit. If you email your essay to me (orzelc at steelypips dot org), though, I’ll add it to the set.