General Chat / SAT's

Most of our subjects include prose answers, with maths being the exception. Even then you sometimes have to answer in prose, especially in statistics. I do biology at uni and I have to write about 2-3 essays a week. I don't understand how you could assess English, Geography, History etc without getting people to write essays. Multiple choice, when applied to those subjects, seems like its missing the point.

Objectivity in marking can be gained through moderation, criteria and sensibility. Of course there are queries, but those are dealt with simply in the UK system. I'd hate to take multiple choice exams all the time - they sound brain-crushingly boring and, in terms of actually learning things, pretty useless.

The problem with the marking scheme for English A-level in England and Wales is that there are absolutely no marks awarded for actually answering the question. It's just a starting point from which you have to fulfil various "assessment objectives", such as analysis of language, demonstration of understanding of the context of the literature, comparison to other literature, and of course spelling, grammar and fluency of your response. Consequently, we saw a Gatsby essay that had just spewed out an American Dream essay with no real relevance to the specific question but had been awarded 25/25. My point being that essays can be marked objectively if you specify clear areas which students have to demonstrate ability in, but the system kind of fails over here.

The good news is, as a resident of Massachusetts, I am used to the MCAS tests, which we take in grades 4, 8, and 10. They had essays, short answers, and lots of other shit, and went on for a week. It was way worse than the SAT could ever be.

Also, one of the very few things I am good at in life is writing, so I'm not especially worried about the essay. For some reason I do really well on standardized tests. And now I'm taking a term-long SAT Math course at my school so my math score should be up in the 700s. I guess I'll have a better idea when I get my PSAT results back, though those didn't have the essay.