Shakespeare's heralded writings wouldn't be sufficient to get him into Dartmouth or any other Ivy League institution -- at least not according to the Princeton Review. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, on the other hand, would have his pick of the Ancient Eight.
Shakespeare and Kaczynski are just two of four famous writers whose work the Princeton Review graded according to the same standards the College Board will use to grade high-school students' essays on the new writing portion of the SAT. Its findings will run in March issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
The test prep company had its trained essay-readers grade samples of writing from Shakespeare, Kaczynski, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein based on the rubric provided by the College Board for how the essays would be graded.
The results were far from encouraging.
While Kaczynski received the highest possible grade of six on a scale from one to six, the others did not fare so well. Hemingway received a three, Shakespeare a two and Stein the lowest possible score of one. The excerpt of Hemingway's writing came from his acceptance speech after winning the Nobel Prize in literature.
The new writing portion of the SAT "doesn't measure anything about a student's writing ability," Erik Olson, co-author of the article said. "Its superficial, begs for satire and cannot measure anything about writing beyond a simple diagnosis."
In March 2005, the College Board will roll out the new SAT, which will be longer, harder and more expensive. The largest difference, however, is the addition of the new writing section -- basically a "cannibalization of the old SAT II Writing test," according to Olson. Students will be asked to write a brief, timed essay in response to a prompt and will be given multiple-choice questions to gauge their grammar skills.
"What fools these College Board people be," said John Katzman, co-author of the article, and CEO of the Princeton Review. "They simply tacked the essay from the old SAT II Writing test onto the new SAT in order to appease its largest client, the state university system of California, which was threatening to stop requiring the outmoded SAT and find a more relevant test."
The current SAT II Writing test, which provides the prototype for the new SAT section, gives students approximately 30 minutes to write an essay in response to a brief prompt, usually in the form of a quotation.
Essay graders, who are usually high school teachers, are given a scoring rubric on which to grade essays and are expected to grade a certain quantity in a set period of time. These graders, according to the Princeton Review, are trained to emphasize "development of ideas, supporting examples, organization, word choice and sentence structure."
"The idea of requiring an essay on the SAT is pedagogically correct, but the implementation is pathetic," Katzman said. "Kids will be rewarded for adhering to a very strict formula leaving no room for creative or imaginative prose. Reviewers will spend a minute skimming for paragraph breaks, a topic sentence and some grammar, making this a poor predictor of writing aptitude."
The College Board, the makers of the SAT and SAT II tests, is frequently criticized for various aspects of the writing test. One of the most common criticisms is the ambiguity of grading these brief writing samples. However, defenders of the test contend that there is no better way that is still feasible.
"It's humorous pointing out the ridiculousness of pitting different evaluation systems against each other," English professor Colleen Boggs said of the Atlantic Monthly article. "What would happen if you judged every author in a standardized way? What would happen if you expected creativity on a standardized test?"
Beginning Feb. 17, when the article hits newsstands, the Princeton Review will also be running a contest to see who can best rewrite Shakespeare's graded excerpt. Contest details are posted on http://www.theatlantic.com.
