Thanks to the addition of a writing component to the SAT I, college admission officers now can compare a student's own, candid writing ability with their college application essays to gauge the level of outside help a student may have received during the application process.
Kaplan, a test preparation company, performs an annual survey of college admissions officers across the country, and the focus of this year's survey was on the new writing component, which became an official part of the SAT I for the high school class of 2006, said Jon Zeitlin, general manager of SAT and ACT programs at Kaplan.
Kaplan wanted to determine if admissions officers would give the writing score the same weight as the traditional math and reading portions and if admissions officers would look at the actual essays or just the final score, Zeitlin said.
According to the survey, 47 percent of the colleges are adopting a "wait and see" approach, meaning they will not give the writing component scores any weight until more information about the exam is available.
Survey results show that the University, along with colleges like Harvard and Duke, falls into the group of schools that will give the writing component equal weight with the math and critical reading sections.
While not all colleges will give the actual writing score any weight in the admissions process, Zeitlin said 58 percent of colleges said they would reference a student's SAT essay when there were discrepancies with his or her application essays.
Dean of Admissions John Blackburn said University admissions officers will review the SAT essays if there is a question about test scores or the application essays.
"If we see something that looks like it could be published in 'The New Yorker,' we would expect good SAT reading and writing scores," Blackburn said. "If those scores are low, or if one of the other credentials doesn't corroborate, that's the kind of case where we might pull up the SAT essays and look at them."
Zeitlin said while the impetus behind the writing portion was not to create a comparison for application essays, he believes more colleges are using the SAT essay to detect outside help on application essays because of an increasing amount of students who are receiving too much parental or professional help and are not writing enough of their application essays themselves.
Blackburn pointed out that having the additional writing sample as a point of comparison is not new for the University because it has required applicants to take the SAT II Writing Subject test, but having both application essays and access to the essay written during the SAT provides a well-rounded view of a student's writing ability.
"With the application essays, it is the kind of writing you do for a paper in a class where you have drafts and that is how any important writing is going to be done," Blackburn said. "With the short 20 to 25 minutes for writing an essay, that's pressure-packed and kind of like what you are doing in a blue book for finals. We like having both -- it adds to the information we have"
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