Last month, more than a million high school students across the country took the Scholastic Assessment Test, the college admissions test more commonly known as the SAT. Their hopes will teeter on answers to geometry and analogy questions-those little numbered ovals filled in with that No. 2 pencil.
In a bid to improve their scores on the SAT, about 10 percent of those students paid hundreds of dollars for extracurricular courses marketed by companies that promise to sharpen test-taking strategies.
But what options exist for the majority of anxious test-takers who are unable to enroll in such courses because of the cost or conflicting schedules or lack of room?
An age-old answer is test-prep books, generally less than $20. A better option for families with personal computers is software that mimics the courses for not much more than the cost of a textbook.
The three leading SAT prep software packages, all priced at about $50 and available for both IBM-compatible and Macintosh PCs, are Cliffs Studyware for the SAT I, Davidson’s Your Personal Trainer for the SAT, and Inside the SAT from the Princeton Review.
Another leader in the test-prep field, Kaplan, is planning to introduce similar software during the second half of this year.
And even the College Board, the not-for-profit trade association of 3,000 high schools and colleges that sponsors the test, will release a competing program, One-on-One With the SAT, this month-in time to help students prepare for tests scheduled for Oct. 14, Nov. 4 and Dec. 2.
The three programs available now are multimedia applications that combine sound and graphics-some include video-with the usual serving of text. All use the built-in intelligence of the computer to monitor the student’s right and wrong answers constantly in practice drills and mock tests and to provide immediate instructive feedback about each answer, in prose and instruction that occasionally borders on dull.
The quality varies. The Cliffs and Princeton programs explain both correct and incorrect answers, while Davidson’s explains only correct choices. All show how much time was spent pondering each question, as well as how many answers were correct or incorrect.
Inside the SAT (no list price, but sells for $40 to $50 in stores), contains the most complete lessons and drills. There are finely tuned explanations of incorrect and correct answers and drills that even ask the student to figure the incorrect answer purposely. The point is to teach the student what mistakes not to make on test day.
It comes on five floppy disks and contains no video, only some graphics that occasionally move. Of the three programs, it is the most visually appealing and therefore the easiest to comprehend at a glance. Overall, it’s the best of the group.
A CD-ROM version, including videos of teachers critiquing the student’s responses, is promised for August. The price has not been determined.
Your Personal Trainer for the SAT ($49.95 list), also on CD-ROM, contains a short introductory video that is not part of the practice software. The practice portion is the weakest of the three in visual appeal, and the program requires the most movement of the mouse to navigate the screen.
Only general strategic tips and short explanations of correct answers are given, and a brief tour of the program uncovered no explanation of incorrect answers during drills. It rates below Princeton and above Cliffs for the extensiveness of its lessons.
Cliffs Studyware for the SAT I ($49.95 list). The CD-ROM contains 45 videotaped lessons explaining how the test questions should be answered.
The software also offers the chance to look up certain vocabulary words in the program’s glossary. Every answer-even an incorrect one-is accompanied by an explanation. A timer offers the actual time of day, the elapsed time or the time remaining to finish the section. Of the three, Cliffs was least helpful because it provided less complete instruction.
According to the programs’ designers, the software’s immediate feedback and reporting capability makes it as effective as the expensive courses.
“A book won’t tell you if you’re getting a technique right, and if you don’t, there is no recourse,” said James E. Reynolds, the director of electronic publishing at Princeton Review Inc. in New York.
Rodney A. Scher, the associate director of Cliffs Studyware, a unit of Cliffs Notes Inc. in Lincoln, Neb., said: “The software is the ultimate one-on-one. In class, the student can’t hope to get 100 percent of the instructor’s time, even though he or she might have paid $500.”
In defense of classes, however, Reynolds, who has taught about 3,000 students in SAT preparatory courses, noted that the instructor can emphasize or skip over lessons as needed.
“There are no techniques in our course that are not also taught in the software. There is no nugget of information the kid in the course will walk away with that the kid with the software won’t,” he said. “The difference is the personal touch, which we can’t duplicate on a computer.”
Furthermore, while the software is limited to two different attempts at explanations, an instructor is limited only by his abilities as a teacher.
Jared Heyman, a 17-year-old junior at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Ga., who has been using Inside the SAT, likes the fact that the program was written to appeal to teenagers. “The graphics are really good,” he said. “The language is the language of youth, not adults.”
Caroline Wild, a 16-year-old classmate of Heyman’s, agreed that the software is more convenient than a course. “I can sit down with it at odd hours,” she said. “It’s nice to have the option to be able to learn it whenever I want.”
Princeton and Davidson’s claim tbeir software can help raise a student’s SAT score by at least 100 points. Cliffs makes no such claim.
At least one education expert remains skeptical of the claims. Seymour W. Itzkoff, the author of “The Decline of Intelligence in America” (Praeger, 1994), said that studies have shown that a student’s score on the verbal section of the SAT is very difficult to raise with any amount of preparation. It is possible to improve upon a math score, he said, to a limited degree, if the studying is done “in close proximity to taking the SAT.”
