Last year, I was asked to tutor a student who was studying for the SAT with the College Board's online program, and I naively agreed to go through some sections with him. I assumed that since the program had been developed by the College Board, the tests had to be accurate. Right?
But a funny thing happened when I started to work through the questions with him. I wasn't sure of some of the answers. Now let me provide some background: I've been writing SAT Writing tests for various companies for almost as long as the Writing section has been part of the SAT I. There's pretty much nothing I don't know about how the College Board structures its actual tests. And one thing I know is that the right answer, while someone frustratingly awkward, is never arbitrary (ok, one or two answers have made me raise my eyebrows, but those were exceptions). There's always a good reason it's the right answer. But some of these answers were totally arbitrary. I was floored. I made him ditch the online program -- for the Writing, at least -- got my College Board book, and started running him through the actual rules of the test.
About six months later, it happened again. I was working with a student, going through some test material that looked like it had been produced by the College Board, when I hit a question with two apparent right answers. After about 30 seconds, it occurred to me to ask my student where she'd gotten the test from. She told me her math tutor had given it to her. I asked her whether it was from an administered test or from the online program, and let's just say that I wasn't surprised to hear that it was from the latter.
Incidentally, this post was inspired by yet another student who very recently came to me wanting to go over Writing tests from the online program. After about fifteen minutes, I was ready to bang my head against the wall trying to convince her that they were not accurate indicators of her score (the tip-off was when she told me that she kept missing usage questions, which hardly ever show up on real tests). Fortunately, she gave in and agreed to just use ones written by the College Board.
So consider this a public service announcement: while the CB online program is fine for Math and CR, it is not completely fine for Writing. I'll admit that it's better than most of what's out there, but it still gives the impression that the test is far more random than it actually is. And SAT Writing is anything but random. If you finish the Blue Book and are desperate for material, you may want to considerate it, but please do so with the knowledge that it's not quite the real thing.
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