To help students better understand how colleges and
universities will be evaluating the SAT, Kaplan Test Prep and
Admissions conducted a survey of college admissions officers at
374 top schools nationwide. The survey reveals that many schools
are taking a wait-and-see approach to weighting the Writing
section in their decision-making process. In fact, nearly half of
the survey respondents said they will adopt an interim policy of
not counting the Writing score this year. However, many elite
universities, including Harvard, Dartmouth, Stanford, and Brown,
say that they will give Writing equal consideration to the Math
and Critical Reading sections.
Kaplan's survey also reveals key issues such as:
- if schools will only evaluate the Writing section in
aggregate (combining both the grammar and essay components) or
if they also plan to evaluate the essay separately
- if they will evaluate the essay score for all applicants or
only those who are borderline candidates
- if they will review the SAT essay against application
essays
- what their policies are regarding the ACT Writing Test
To see how your target schools will be evaluating the new SAT
Writing section, check out our
full listing of schools by Writing section policy.
The list of 374 schools represents respondents to Kaplan's survey
of the nation's top 500 schools, as compiled from U.S. News
& World Report's Ultimate College Directory 2004
Edition and Barron's Profiles of American Colleges, 25th
Edition.
PLEASE NOTE that these policies are subject
to change so it is important to verify individual school policies
prior to making application/score submission decisions.
Read the full
results of our survey.
