Worry About Grammar Before the Essay

I think that a lot of undeserved fuss gets made over the SAT essay, probably because it's the most controversial, least objective, and therefore most suspect part of the exam. And then there's that whole MIT essay study... If you're looking something to vilify about the SAT, the essay is an easy target.

The truth, though, is that it shouldn't be your principal area of concern. If you're going to worry about something first, worry about grammar (and no, by the way, this is not being written solely for the sake of self-aggrandizement because The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar is finally available, although I don't deny that it does play a role;)

In all seriousness, there are a couple of reasons why you should deal with the essay only after you've gotten a good, solid handle on the grammar.

1) The multiple-choice score counts more

MC = 2/3, Essay = 1/3. Practically speaking, that means you can nail the grammar and have a mediocre essay and still end up with an amazing score. You cannot, however, nail the essay and have a so-so multiple choice choice without doing major damage. To illustrate:

I had a student who was absolutely fantastic at the grammar but had an incredibly hard time with the essay. He got a 49/49 and an 8 essay and ended up with a 780.

On the other hand, a 30 raw score with a 10 essay is about a 570. A 38 raw score and a 12 essay is still only about a 670.

2) Essay graders are unpredictable

The truth is that you have no idea who is going to end up grading your essay. Yes, in principle everyone is trained to score essays according to the same rubric, but you never really know whether one particular set of graders will both give a borderline essay a 4 or a 5. I've seen 10 essays that should have been 8s, 8 essays that should have been 6s, and 8 essays that should have been 10s. There's just no way to predict.

3) Multiple choice grammar is the easiest section to improve 

With the exception of an occasional weird question, multiple-choice questions are generally not subjective. A subject-verb agreement error is wrong, any way you look at it.

You learn the rules and the patterns, you get a higher score, it's that simple. And there are patterns galore. While the fewest 800s are earned on the Writing section, largely because of the essay, most tutors agree - with good reason - that the multiple choice section is in fact the easiest score to bring up quickly.

Even if you blow the idiom questions and get everything else right, you can still pull a raw score of 47/49, which is a 750 with an 8 essay and an 800 with a 12.

Convinced yet?

Don't just write what you think the College Board wants to hear

While much of what the College Board produces in terms of guidance for its own test is, to put it very politely, garbage, I find the following oft-ignore tidbit from the Official Guide to be remarkably truthful:

There is no formula for writing an effective essay. You are free to choose your own writing style. For example, you can write an essay that is narrative, expository, persuasive or argumentative. Furthermore, there are no guidelines on how to organize your essay; use the approach that best fits our topic and point of view. Good writing is not strict adherence to a formula; rather, it is the strong development of ideas, the ability to connect to an audience, precise use of language, effective organization and appropriate choices of evidence. (OG, 2nd Edition, p. 103)

I realize that I've written this information in somewhat different words in the past, but here I want to make a very specific point, namely that if you are a truly strong writer with an iron-clad grasp of grammar, mechanics, and style, you should not attempt to dumb yourself down in any way and write the SAT essay you think that the College Board wants to see. (If you want to be honest about whether you fall into this category, I suggest that you check out Avery's Diubaldo's blog posts on the New York Times "The Choice" blog. If you can't write as well as this kid, this post doesn't apply to you.) If you do so, there's a decent chance you'll do the standardized-testing equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.

I give this advice as someone who did in fact try to outsmart the test and did in fact end up with a lower essay score than I most likely would have otherwise.

I also say this as someone who's read people proclaim on places such as College Confidential that they refuse to debase themselves by writing the sort of drivel that the College Board rewards.

While I don't dispute that it is possible to get a high score with a conventional, five-paragraph, less than brilliantly-written piece of drivel, that does not by extension mean that a genuinely original, thought-provoking, well-constructed essay that uses only one example will *not* get a high score. The essay graders aren't so clueless that they'll penalize you for actual competence.

Besides, from what I've seen, essays that pander to false notions about what the CB wants tend to feel stock and artificial. They also tend not to receive very top scores (11-12).

Bottom line: just write like yourself. If you're really that good, you'll get a great score -- formula or no formula. Don't mess up your chances trying to write in a way you only imagine the College Board wants you to write.

Gerund vs. Participle

In discussions about choosing answers on Fixing Sentences, the word "gerund" is often used as a blanket term covering just about anything that ends in -ing.

It's not quite that simple, however. Yes, gerunds are formed by tacking -ing onto verb (e.g. go ---> going, talk ---> talking), but participles are also formed exactly the same way. And while gerunds are usually bad, participles...well, not so much. They actually have very little impact on whether an answer is wrong or right.

This means that if you're indiscriminately eliminating answer choices just because they contain words ending in -ing, you might get yourself into some trouble.

Here's the distinction:

Gerund: A gerund is a verb that acts as a noun. It usually follows a possessive adjective such as her, your, or their (e.g. I was annoyed by his whistling).

Participle: A participle is a verb that acts as an adjective. It precedes a noun, exactly the way an adjective does (e.g. I was annoyed by the whistling boy).

So if you see a sentence that reads, "Although it lacks traditional circus elements such as animals and clowns, Cirque du Soleil is regarded as an exciting spectacle," it's probably fine. "Exciting" functions as an adjective modifying "spectacle," not as a gerund.

On the other hand, a sentence that reads "In spite of its lacking traditional circus elements such as animals and clowns, Cirque du Soleil is regarded as an exciting spectacle,"is almost guaranteed to be wrong. "Lacking" is a gerund that makes the sentence unnecessarily wordy and awkward.

There aren't a lot of sentences that contain participles only and no gerunds, but there are enough to make it worth your while to know the difference.

Error-ID answers are NOT about how you think the sentence should sound

One of the top reasons the Error-ID section can be tricky is that there are so many underlined words and phrases that seem strange, as if they could potentially contain an error. I truly cannot count the number of times I've had a student look at sentence, screw up his or her face, and promptly announce, "That sounds funny!"

Well guess what. Error-ID sentences are chosen precisely because they contain phrasings that most high school students will be unfamiliar with and will therefore find strange. That does not, however, mean that they are wrong. Error-ID answer choices are wrong only only if they are always wrong; they are never wrong if they represent one of several possible correct ways to write phrase or if  "you would say it differently." Your personal preference, dear test-taker, does not enter into the equation.

Furthermore, Error-ID options can be wrong in three ways and three ways only:

1) Grammatically
2) Logically
3) Idiomatically

If a suspicious word or phrase does not fall into one of those categories, it cannot be wrong.

I'm going to illustrate with a question that a number of my students have found tricky:



At the reception were the chattering guests, the three-tiered
A                            B                 C
cake, and the lively music that have become characteristic of
                                                                                     D
many wedding receptions. No error
                                                  E

Many of my students have chosen "D" for this question because they thought there was a noun agreement problem (that is, the chattering guests, three-tiered cake, and lively music are three things and thus must be characteristics of). The problem with this interpretation of the question is that it does not take into account the fact that "characteristic of" is a fixed phrase that is unaffected by the number of the things it is modifying. In fact, "characteristic of" is the option more in accordance with standard usage in this case, although the other would be acceptable.

The sentence would only be wrong if it read: "At the reception were the chattering guests, the three-tiered cake, and the lively music that have become a characteristic of many wedding receptions."

The point, however, is that if there are in fact two right answers, the answer given on the test will never be wrong. And yes, the answer to the above question is in fact "No error."

Fixing Paragraphs: Half Reading & Half Writing

As I mentioned to Debbie Stier today, Fixing Paragraphs often feels like the neglected step-child of the SAT. It doesn't seem as fun as the other Writing sections (relatively speaking), and no one seems to spend much time talking about it. Nevertheless, it shouldn't be underestimated. Missing just four multiple choice Writing questions is enough to get you from an 800 to a 700, and if stumbling on just one or two Fixing Paragraphs questions can have serious consequences if you don't absolutely nail Error-IDs and Fixing Sentences. So here goes.

"Fixing Paragraphs" may be part of the Writing portion of the SAT, but its placement there is somewhat deceptive. The reality is that Fixing Paragraphs does test some writing skills, but it also tests reading skills. To do well on the section, it is therefore necessary to know which questions require which approach.

Fixing Sentences questions fall into two general categories:

1) Grammar and style questions require you to either choose the best version of a particular sentence or two choose the best way of combining two sentences.

These are essentially Writing questions, and the rules for answering them are essentially the same as those for Fixing Sentences: shorter answers are more likely to be correct, gerunds are bad, and passive voice is bad.

While it is not crucial that you go back to the passage to examine the sentence(s) in context, it may be necessary to do so

2) Paragraph organization and rhetoric questions require you to identify main ideas and understand the relationships between ideas and paragraphs. These are essentially Reading questions (I call them "Critical Reading-lite"), and when you answer them, you need to approach them the basic same way that you would approach Critical Reading questions.

While tone is generally irrelevant, main point is still of the utmost importance. In order to determine where a particular piece of information should be inserted or moved within a given paragraph, you need to be able to distinguish between information whose function is to introduce an idea or provide an overview (i.e. a topic sentence) and information designed to provide supporting detail...neither of which you can do without first determining the point.

For these questions, you should plan to look back at the passage, ideally before you look at the answers. Go back and read, try to get an idea of the answer for yourself, and only then look at the choices. If there's an option that's more or less what you came up with, it will almost certainly be right.

Pay attention to adjectives in SAT Critical Reading answer choices

At some point, most people who spend some time studying for the SAT find themselves confronted with two Critical Reading answers that appear to say pretty much the same thing and realize that they have no idea how to distinguish between them. If you find yourself in this situation, a useful strategy can be to focus on any adjectives that may appear in either answer.

Why the adjectives? Because adjectives give you scope -- that is, they give you more information about the precise aspect of the passage that you need to go back and check out. If that aspect of the passage doesn't truly correspond to the adjective in the answer choice, the answer is not right -- no matter how well the rest of the answer fits. When people say that one word can make an entire answer wrong, they're very often talking about an adjective.

For instance, if an answer choice refers to a personal anecdote, and the word "I" doesn't appear in the passage, there's probably nothing personal in the passage, and the answer cannot be correct. It doesn't matter if there is an anecdote somewhere -- the personal part is all that counts.

Adjectives also specify and limit and give you what to look for in terms of tone. If an author is generally positive about a topic and the answer choice contains a negative adjective describing that topic, it's probably not right and can eliminated automatically.

If you're planning to switch from the SAT to the ACT (or vice-versa)...

try to make the change sooner rather than later.

I say this because I seem to encountering quite a few students who plugged away diligently at prepping for one test for months and then, when their scores weren't nearly as high as what they wanted, suddenly decided to try the other test and then didn't do nearly as well on *that* test as they would have liked. Then they just got frustrated.

While I do think that differences between the tests are often overblown, I certainly recognize that there is a group of students for whom the ACT is naturally easier than the SAT, as well as a group for whom the SAT is naturally easier than the ACT. I've also encountered enough students in both categories to know that this preference is sometimes completely unrelated to how someone is actually scoring on one test vs. the other.

However,  if you wait until the, say, the spring of your junior year to discover that the ACT test makes more sense to you than the SAT, you will most likely be putting yourself at a disadvantage. Although there is a good deal of overlap between the two tests, you will probably need some time to get accustomed to the quirks and pacing issues associated with each one. If you spend six months prepping for one and then a month prepping for the other, well... you might not be thrilled with the results. Most large score gains don't happen overnight, or even in a few weeks.

So the moral of the story is that if you're a rising junior, it's worth spending a little bit of your summer trying out each test and figuring out which one makes more sense to you. Get an Official College Board Guide and an ACT Official Guide, sit down, and do a couple of sections of each. You don't have to do it all at once or even all in the same week, but if you can go into your junior year already focusing on the test you have the best shot at doing well on, you might save yourself a lot of stress down the line.

Why Most Time Problems Really Aren't

I think that far too much gets made of the fact that the SAT is a timed test. Yes, you do need to practice finishing sections within the allotted time and take a full-length test or two before the real thing in order to learn how to pace yourself, but in your actual studying, your goal needs to be mastering the actual material, not just doing timed section after timed section and seeing how fast you can get.

I've had a couple of students come to me seriously concerned about time issues and wanting to focus on improving their speed. They were all a bit surprised to learn that I don't ever really deal directly with with speed. Why? Because speed is what results when you strengthen the actual (logical, mathematical, grammatical, etc.) skills that the SAT tests rather than a technique in and of itself.

If you just focus on the speed at the expense of the actual skills, you end up short-circuiting the entire process. You might get faster, but your score probably won't go up all that much.

On the other hand, if you improve your skills sufficiently, you won't waste time pondering answer choices rather than actively solving problems, and the time issue usually takes care of itself. 

A Closer Look at "Being" (SAT Writing)

When it comes to answer patterns, one of the easiest to spot on SAT Writing is undoubtedly the general wrongness of options containing the word "being." It's been discussed here and here among other places.

What I think often gets overlooked in these discussions, however, is the fact that the rule regarding "being" -- and gerunds in general -- often plays out somewhat differently in Error-IDs and Fixing Sentences. Granted I haven't done a statistical analysis, but I have spent enough time looking at tests to be able to say this with a fair amount of confidence.

In general it is true that in Fixing Sentences, an answer choice that contains the word "being" is virtually guaranteed to be wrong, either because the word is used in place of a main verb (e.g. Mark Twain being one of the best-known satirists of the nineteenth century) or because it is used to create an unnecessarily wordy and awkward construction (e.g. "Mark Twain is very well known today being that he was a brilliant satirist" rather than "Mark Twain is very well known today because he was a brilliant satirist").

In Error-IDs, however, the same doesn't quite hold true. Yes, "being" is perhaps somewhat more likely to be incorrect, particularly on the very easiest questions (where it may be used very obviously to replace a main verb), but otherwise it's just as likely to be a distractor answer. This is in part because the only real error category that "being" falls into is gerund vs. infinitive, and it is highly unlikely that any given Error-ID section will include more than or or two such questions.

So yes, on Fixing Sentences, you should be very, very suspicious of any answer choice that contains the word "being," but if the word is underlined on Error-IDs, take good look at your other options before you jump to pick it.

The Importance of Understanding Critical Reading Passage Structure

While working with Debbie Stier this past weekend, I had something of an epiphany about the Critical Reading section (I think Debbie had a Critical Reading epiphany as well, but I'll let her discuss that herself!). It is has to with the structure of many passages and the significance of that structure in terms of the SAT's larger goal.

Let me back up a moment. In all the brouhaha over the "real meaning" of the SAT, it is to forget that it -- like the ACT -- is essentially a measure of college readiness. Regardless of what the SAT started out as, it is now recognized as a having validity only as a predictor of freshman college grades. And in my experience, a student's comprehension of the passages on the Critical Reading section is, in general, a remarkably accurate gauge of whether she or he is prepared to handle college-level reading and thinking. 

Here's why: one of the classic structure of SAT passages -- and indeed of passages on pretty much all ETS -produced tests, including the GRE, the LSAT, and the GMAT -- is exactly the same as one of the most common structures of an academic article.

Part I: 

Presents the topic, gives general and/or historical overview

Part II: 

"What other people think"

Discusses the standard interpretation, "received wisdom" surrounding that topic

Part III:

Problematizes the standard interpretation: raises objections, points out inconsistencies and places where the argument doesn't hold up

Part IV:

"What I think"

Offers own interpretation, either in the form of a more nuanced version of the standard interpretation or, on occasion, the complete opposite of the standard interpretation

Why is it so important to be able to distinguish these parts, to be able to understand what an author offers up as standard interpretation versus what she or he actually thinks?

Well, because that's exactly what college-level thinking ultimately entails: being able to understand and synthesize other people's arguments in order to be able to formulate a well-reasoned, well-supported response with precision and nuance. And it is impossible to formulate such a response without truly understand how the existing arguments work and what their implications are.

If you take an economics class and reading an article about the limits of Keynesian theory, for example, you need to be able to distinguish the description of Keynesian theory from the author's discussion of the standard interpretation of Keynesian theory (what other people think) from the author's own argument (what I think) in order to even begin to think up a response.

The world of academia essentially consists of an ongoing dialogue between scholars, sometimes separated by hundreds of years  -- sometimes the result is brilliant and sometimes it's nothing more than inane and petty squabbles (far more the latter than the former!), but it's a dialogue nonetheless.

This is not something one is generally made aware of in high school, where the goal is simply to memorize and regurgitate as much information as possible in the shortest period of time, but it is the underlying context for much of what shows up on the SAT. And simply having that knowledge can go a long way toward putting Critical Reading into perspective. 

Isn't it ironic...

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about the effectiveness of strategy-based prep , I'd just like to say that I find the following just a tad ironic:

“It breaks my heart to see families who can’t afford it spending money they desperately need on test prep when no evidence would indicate that this money is well-spent,” – William Fitzsimmons, Harvard University’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions.

Certainly not everyone has the skills or the motivation to benefit from every kind of prep, but just because the average increase is 30 points doesn't mean that a small group at the top don't actually make massive gains.

If anyone stands to benefit from test-prep, strategy-based or otherwise, it's exactly the sort of students who might have an actual shot at getting into Harvard -- that is, sixteen year-olds with rock-solid reading and math skills who maybe just haven't figured out every last trick on their own but who, upon learning some basic strategies, can without too much effort jump the 200 or 300 points they need to be competitive. Sixteen year-olds who know enough about the admissions game to understand that without a hook, they don't really stand a chance without a 2300+.

One wonders what Bill has to say regarding the families that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on tutoring -- and have no problem affording it -- for far less intelligent sixteen year-olds, some of whom he undoubtedly has a direct hand in admitting to Harvard (perhaps because he perceives their superior character?). The ones who who hire Arun Alagappan and his cronies at Advantage for up $1,500 per 50-minute session. (No, $1,500 won't even buy you an hour of tutoring!) Or buy the complete Michelle Hernandez admissions consulting package for $40,000 -- not including SAT tutoring -- then waltz into Harvard on "merit."

I happen to find that a good deal more worrisome.

Some Thoughts About Strategy-Based Prep

When proclaiming that the SAT and the ACT are not tests that can be effectively coached, the College Board and the ACT like to trot out the following statistic, courtesy of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling

Existing academic research suggests average gains as a result of commercial test preparation are in the neighborhood of 30 points on the SAT and less than one point on the ACT, substantially lower than gains marketed by test preparation companies.

Let's take a moment and unpack this assertion. First, one of the key words here is "commercial test prep" (e.g. Kaplan and Princeton Review); nowhere is tutoring through "boutique" companies or private tutoring mentioned. As someone who has helped more than one student increase their Verbal (Reading and Writing) scores alone by 350+ points, I have some grounds for disputing the idea that the shortcomings of commercial test-prep should not be extended to test-prep in general.

That's not, however, what I really want to focus on here. What interests me, rather, is the idea of average gains and the way in which that average was determined. I've been thinking about this thanks to Debbie Stier, who put up a very interesting blog link to the following article by cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, a professor at the University of Virginia. 

Willingham makes the point that:

When a teacher presents a reading strategy to students, we 

can assume that there are three types of students in the class: 
students who have already discovered the strategy (or something
similar) on their own, students who are not fluent enough decoders
to use the strategy, and students who are good decoders but don’t 
know the strategy. Only the last group of students will benefit 
from reading strategy instruction. When a researcher finds an 
average effect size of d=0.33 for teaching students the strategy, 
that effect is probably actually composed of many students 
who showed no benefit and a smaller number of students 
who showed a large benefit.



I think that something very similar is going on in many strategy-based prep classes, only at a more exaggerated level because the reading on the SAT is considerably above the level that many high school students are accustomed to encountering. My guess is that only about 10-15% of the people who take those tests (those scoring 600-650+) actually have solid enough literal comprehension (decoding) skills to even make any sort of strategy-based prep worthwhile.



What this means is that if someone's comprehension skills are truly up to par (meaning, more or less, that they can pick up a College Board Critical Reading passage at random, understand it perfectly, and with no difficulty, summarize the main point and tone), they actually stand to benefit immensely from strategy-based prep. It probably won't help for the ones scoring 700+ from the start because they're already using many of the standard strategies, even unconsciously, but for many of the still-small percentage scoring in the 600-700 range, the increase can be very substantial. Many of the ones who persistently score in the 500s, however, won't succeed in raising their scores at all because they lack the core skills on which to base the strategies they learn.




This points to a disturbing conclusion: the real problem isn't that people can raise their reading scores by learning strategies (aka "tricks") but rather that the vast majority of test-takers don't even even have strong enough comprehension skills to make it worthwhile for them to learn strategies!



Make sure you understand what the questions are actually asking

This post was inspired by Akil Bello's Best SAT Prep Tip Ever on the Bellcurves blog. While I agree 100% that reading the full question (along with reading full answers) is indeed one of the most important things you can do on the SAT, I also think that advice takes a bit too much for granted because it assumes that most test-takers will understand what a question is asking, provided that they read it carefully enough.

In my experience, however, that's simply not the case.

I think there's a tendency to forget that vocabulary issues can crop in passage-based Critical Reading questions themselves as well as in passages and answer choices. If you don't understand precisely what a question is requiring you to do when it asks you which of the following would most undermine a given theory, it's very hard to answer that question correctly!

Take inference questions, which I've written about recently. When a question asks you make an inference about what a particular person mentioned in a passage would believe, it is generally asking you to make a reasonable assumption about that person's beliefs based on specific information that the author says about that person. It is not simply asking you to summarize what that person says or believes. It is asking you to form a general, often more abstract idea that will not be found word-for-word in the text. But if you don't make that distinction, if you just try to summarize what the person says or thinks, you'll be lost when you look at the answer choices.

Or, to give a slightly more concrete example, it will be very hard for you to answer a question that uses the word "analogous" if you don't really know what that means.

So I'm going to suggest two things. First, treat any unfamiliar vocabulary you find in the actual questions the exact same way you would treat any other SAT vocabulary -- write it down and learn it.

Second, try rephrasing the questions in your own words to make sure you actually understand what you need to do. So, for examples, if a question asks you what "transition is marked" in a particular line, you can rephrase it as "what change happens in the passage here?" Define, sum up, simplify. Whatever you have to do to make sure you understand.

The Zen of Test Prep

I used to use the words "zen" and "test prep" in the same sentence only in the most tongue-in-cheek manner, but I've been thinking about it seriously of late, and I actually think there's a connection.


First, though, lest you think I've gotten all new-agey, let me make it clear that I am not talking about meditating in order to get yourself in test-taking mode or reduce your anxiety or anything of that ilk. There are test-prep companies that do that sort of thing, but I'll refrain from voicing my opinion about them. Suffice it to say that I am a firm believer in the principle that the best way to reduce test anxiety is simply to master the material on the test.


What I'm talking about is the attitude with which you approach the entire test-preparation process. One of the things I've noticed is that students who come to me knowing that they have big gaps in their knowledge and that they don't really know what they're doing tend to end up with higher scores in the long run than students who come to me with relatively high scores, convinced that they only have to find the one trick that'll make everything perfect.


I think that this is largely because the first group has what's known as beginner's mind: because they have no illusions about knowing more than they actually know, they're wide open when it comes to absorbing new information. They simply learn it and apply it as necessary because they know it's their only hope, and consequently their scores often rise dramatically. The ones who think they know it all or are convinced that they deserve a particular score...well, they usually don't do anywhere near as well as they'd like.


The other thing that characterizes my most successful students is that they never take the test too personally. That is, even though most of them have complained about it or tried to get out of it completely on occasion ("Erica, how about we forget the SAT for today and just talk about Harry Potter? Come on, you know that would be SO much more fun"), in the end they're willing to accept the test on its own terms.


It's really impossible to overstate the importance of that last part. It's very satisfying to rage against the College Board for making you take this horrible, stupid, unfair test with ridiculous "correct" answers that people only pick if they know the right tricks. (And everyone knows that of course the SAT is just about tricks.) 


The problem with that mentality is that while it's gratifying in the short term, it can be very damaging in the long run because you never bother to take the time to learn how the test actually functions. Here's the zen part: that means giving up your ego and forgetting about what you think. Whether you agree or disagree with a particular answer is utterly irrelevant; the test isn't going to change for you. It just isn't, no matter how worked up you get. That's a hard notion for a lot of people to swallow, but the sooner you can accept it, the sooner you'll start to make progress. 

More About SAT Inference Questions

In yesterday's post about Critical Reading inference questions, I discussed the basis of formal logic that underlies the majority of such questions. I'd like to follow that up by discussing a slightly different kind of inference question, one that tests people's understanding of how texts are organized and what role a given of information play within an argument.

Although these questions are phrased as inference questions, they are in reality closer to "main point" questions and can be treated as such.

I find the following to be an ideal example ( taken from https://satonlinecourse.collegeboard.com/SR/digital_assets/assessment/pdf/0833A611-0A43-10C2-0148-CC8C0087FB06-F.pdf):


The ability of the “I Have a Dream” speech to high-
light King’s early career at the expense of his later career
accounts for the tone of impatience and betrayal that often
appears when modern-day supporters of King’s agenda talk
about the speech. Former Georgia state legislator Julian 
Bond said in 1986 that commemorations of King seemed to
“focus almost entirely on Martin Luther King the dreamer,
not on Martin King the antiwar activist, not on Martin King
the challenger of the economic order, not on Martin King
the opponentof apartheid, noton the complete Martin
Luther King.”


Question: It can be inferred that, for Julian Bond, a portrait of
“the complete Martin Luther King” (lines 10-11)
would

(A) celebrate King’s influence both within and out-
side the United States
(B) acknowledge the logical lapses in some of King’s
later work
(C) compare King with other significant figures of
his era
(D) achieve a balance between King’s earlier concerns
and his later ones
(E) reveal information about King’s personal as well
as his public life

The primary mistake most people make when attempting to answer a question such as this is that they only read the lines directly involving Julian Bond. These lines tell us that Bond favors a public image of King that would include his more radical activities (antiwar activism, economic equality, etc.) as well as his less provocative ones (MLK the dreamer). That much is relatively clear.

There is, however, no answer that matches that summary, and so here a lot of people start to get confused.

The key to answering a question such as this is to realize that we are being asked not to summarize Bond's words but rather to understand why they are placed where they are within the argument. In other words: what point is the author using Bond's words to support?

Where does an author typically place the point in relation to the evidence? Before. So we must back up and look at the preceding sentence, which tells us that King's modern-day supporters are often upset that people focus on King's early career rather than his later career.

In other words, they want to "achieve a balance between King’s earlier concerns and his later ones" (D).

What makes this an inference question, however, is the fact that the words "For example" (or "for instance") never appear in the second sentence. Based on our knowledge of where examples are typically situated in relation to the points they support, we must therefore make the logical jump that Bond is being cited in order to provide evidence for the idea that King's modern-day supporters are unhappy with the relative lack of focus on his later career.

So it turns out that the right answer is simply a reworded version of an idea explicitly stated in the passage -- it's just not the idea that we were perhaps expecting.

SAT Inference Questions: Where English and Math Meet

This post was inspired by my meeting with Debbie Stier last weekend. Almost as soon as we started to discuss Critical Reading, Debbie mentioned to me that inference questions tended to be the ones that gave her the most trouble -- something I tend to hear fairly often.

One of the reasons that inference questions tend to be so difficult is that most of the people who take the SAT have never been exposed to basic formal logic (at least in a non-mathematical context) and consequently have no idea of the rules that the SAT is playing by. While Critical Reading is by nature considerably more subjective than Math, the basic kinds of reasoning that govern the two sections are far more similar than what most people realize, and nowhere is this more apparent than on inference questions.

It is first of all necessary to distinguish between inference and speculation.

According that all-encompassing source of knowledge, The Wikipedia, inference can be defined as "the act of drawing a conclusion by deductive reasoning from given facts."

Speculation, on the other hand, can be defined as "a conjecture (guess), expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence."

Most incorrect answers on inference questions fall into the realm of speculation; that is, they could be true based on the information in the passage, but usually we simply don't have enough information to judge whether they are actually true. The correct answer is the one that can actually be deduced from the facts presented.

Now, for a given assertion, "If x, then y," there are two valid inferences: one is the statement itself, and the other is the contrapositive: if not y, then not x." So, for example,  from the statement: "if a creature is a dog, then it is an animal," we can make the valid inferences that:

1) A creature that is a dog is an animal (rephrasing of the statement)

2) if a creature is not an animal, then it is not a dog (contrapositive)

This is the essential basis for inference questions.

Critical Reading does not usually go so far as to deal with contrapositives, although using them can help on occasion. Most often, the correct answer to an inference question will quite simply be a rewriting of the of the original statement from a different angle.

For example, if a passage states that the mass of a red dwarf star is smaller than the mass of the sun, the correct answer to an inference question about that fact might be that the mass of the sun is larger than the mass of a dwarf star.

Incorrect answers will simply be outside the bounds of that statement and involve speculation. They might say something like, "Red dwarves have the smallest mass of any object in the solar system" or "It is more difficult to determine the mass of a red dwarf than it is to determine the mass of the sun."

The key to dealing with these statements is to make sure that you are absolutely clear about what the statement in question actually says. Take a couple of seconds, make sure you understand it, and write it down in your own words, then look for the answer closest to that statement. It should be correct.

Some Thoughts on Senior-Year Testing

I don't think I've ever met anyone who actually looked forward to retaking the SAT or the ACT their senior year of high school. You're sick of studying, sick of standardized testing, want to actually enjoy your vacation, and never want to hear anyone utter the words "College Board" or "ACT" again. Burnout is real, I'm not going to argue. Junior year can be unbelievably hard, and it's normal to need some time to recover.

That said, however, you may be doing yourself a major disservice by not retaking your senior year.

First, unless you've truly aced it the first time around (say 2300+ SAT or 33+ ACT), colleges do want to see what you're capable of doing around the time you apply. Many people's scores go up naturally between  the spring of their junior year and the fall of their senior year, even without huge amounts of studying, and you don't want to sell yourself short.

Second, regardless of how sick you are of studying, you need to be realistic about your chances at the colleges you're seriously considering applying to. If your scores don't already fall at or above the 50th percentile for those schools, your chances of getting in are significantly reduced; if you're looking at very competitive schools and are not a recruited athlete, etc., you should ideally be closer to the 75th percentile. Admissions officers won't cut you any slack if they have eight applicants that look very similar to you, and you have the lowest scores of the group.

That doesn't mean you should drop everything over the summer and spend your entire life trying to pull up your test scores. If you've got great scores but nothing else, you won't get very far at most top schools either.

What it does mean, though, is that even if the thought of even looking at another prep book is enough to push you close to a nervous breakdown, you should take a few weeks or a month off and then reassess. If you do decide to retake, focus on the sections that are most manageable. If you've done everything you can with Reading, focus on Writing; if you just need to work on Math, forget everything else (colleges will only take your top scores, even ones that require you to submit everything). Just don't assume that there's nothing else you can do.

Tutor vs. Class vs. Self-Study

So it's summer. Well, almost. If you're going to be a junior (or are the parent of a rising junior) and are just starting to think seriously about SAT/ACT prep, you might be pondering -- and attempting not to be overwhelmed by -- the various options available to you. Here are some thoughts:


Classes

I think that there are really only two situations in which it can be worth taking a class: the first is if you're really anxious about the test and want an introduction to it in a formal setting. Confronting the SAT or the ACT can initially feel overwhelming, and if it helps to have someone else break it down and tell you what to expect, I see nothing wrong with that.

The second is if you're rock-solid on all of the fundamentals going in and just need to learn some basic strategies to help you apply your knowledge to the test. I wouldn't suggest it as a blanket solution since most classes are geared toward people scoring around 550-600, but it can help in some cases.

I confess that taking a Kaplan class the summer before my senior year helped me jump from a 710 to an 800 on Critical Reading because I learned to slow down and actually analyze the questions rather than just going with my gut feeling. (Admittedly, though, that's about all it taught me.) I had a French SAT II student a couple of years ago who'd done Princeton Review and scored a 2300, and she certainly thought the class had helped.

If you do take a class, though, you  need to approach the strategies you learn critically. If something isn't working for you, don't stick with it. I've had plenty of students who came to me after taking Kaplan/PR classes and having their scores go down, and I the first thing I had to do was get them to stop doing everything that wasn't working. If at all possible, try not to go with a big chain; find a smaller local company or a tutor willing to put together a group.

Tutoring


If you need to do serious work on fundamental English or Math skills OR you really only need help in one area, finding a tutor can be a far better choice than taking a class. 


People often discard tutoring as a option because they believe that it's prohibitively expensive but then don't hesitate to pay Kaplan $500-$1,000 -- an amount that could get you 10-20 hours with an excellent tutor.

Never assume that price = quality, however, and many tutoring companies offer financial aid and/or do pro bono work. If you live relatively close to a college or university, try to find a student who scored well and has some tutoring experience; they probably won't charge you a fortune. Contrary to what some tutoring companies would lead their clients to believe, tutors do not need to hold advanced degrees or be former Rhodes scholars (or charge $795+/hr.) to tutor the SAT effectively; they must simply understand how the test works and be capable of effectively conveying the necessary material in a way that is easy to grasp.

Do make sure, however, that a tutor's background matches your needs. Even if many tutors can obtain top scores in all sections of a given test, most are somewhat stronger teaching-wise in one area. If Reading is your weakest section and a tutor has a degree in Chemistry, chances are that may not be a good match. Yes, the SAT is a "reasoning" test (you can interpret that as you wish), but it is also a reading and math test, and if your underlying skills in one of those areas are weak, you need to work with someone who really understands the subject -- not just someone who will teach you tricks and strategies.

A tutor, however, is usually only helpful insofar as a student is motivated and willing to be an active participant in the tutoring process. Otherwise, hiring one can be a big waste of money.

Self-Study

Self-study works best when you're either already solid on the fundamentals or willing to put in large amounts of time to solidify them.

In order to significantly raise your score on your own, you have to be seriously self-motivated. While there are plenty of online programs such as Grockit and Prep Me, you do need to be careful. Much of their material, like that of the major test-prep companies, bears little resemblance to what's on the actual tests, and you risk getting the wrong idea about what you need to study. For a comprehensive review of Grockit, see Mike from PWN the SAT's analysis.

The Official Guides to the SAT/ACT are absolutely indispensable. As much as possible, you need to be working with real material; otherwise you may end up wasting huge amounts of your time. If you can afford to do so, sign up for the College Board's online program, and if you really don't understand why a particular type of question, ask a friend or a parent or a teacher for help.

There's always College Confidential, but you need to be careful with some of the advice. Just because a particular strategy (e.g. jumping right to the questions without reading the passage first) worked for someone doesn't mean it'll work for you. You need to be willing to experiment with different techniques and see what makes sense to you. You also need to be willing to go over your work very, very carefully and analyze what you do and don't know, not just crash through lots of material and expect your score to automatically rise. Familiarity does not equal mastery.

Self-study can work, but it's definitely not the road for everyone.

Don't Go Too Fast On ACT Reading

Here's a cautionary tale:

One of my students who had been doing quite well (around a 30) on ACT Reading  suddenly started to see his score drop down into the low 20s. I wasn't hugely concerned; it was finals week, he was stressed and exhausted, etc. and it was normal for him to be less focused.

Nevertheless, I asked him to do a passage while I watched, just so I could see how he was working through things. I didn't time him, but after maybe four or five minutes, he got convinced that he was running so far behind that it would be impossible for him to recover. When I looked at the wrong answers he was choosing, they all seemed to be of the "half-right half-wrong" variety, and it occurred to me that he was freaking himself about time, then rushing and not reading carefully, and consequently missing questions he would have gotten right.

So I asked him to try an experiment: I would time him on a passage, but I also wanted him to completely forget about time -- even go a bit more slowly than normal -- and just work carefully.

Not only did he did he finish with 45 seconds to spare, but he also got every single question right.

So the moral of the story is: don't rush. Even if you feel like you're running out of time, it's more important to work carefully and not get through all the questions than to get through all of the questions and get a lot of them wrong.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the ACT Reading curve is huge. Even if you don't get to finish the last couple of questions, you can still get a score well above 30. Just work carefully!

When is a noun not an noun? (ACT English)

Answer: when it's an adjective.

One of the ACT's favorite ways to play with you is to take words that normally act like nouns -- often professions such as author, architect, scientist, etc. -- and use them as adjectives. This might not seem like much of a big deal, or even something you'd really need to pay attention to, except that it actually involves something the ACT absolutely to test: commas.

Consider the following:

You probably wouldn't write something like, "I.M. Pei is a famous, architect."

Even if you don't know that "celebrated" is an adjective and that "architect" is a noun, you can probably feel that the comma is wrong there; there's no natural break in the sentence.

But what about this?

Glass is perhaps the building material most often associated with celebrated architect, I.M. Pei.

Suddenly that comma seems like it could be ok. It also seems like it could not be ok. It might even seem like one of those optional commas that you can just stick in if you're in the mood. As a matter of fact, why is the ACT even testing something that has two right answers?

It doesn't.

The reason is that "architect," in this case," is being used to describe I.M. Pei. It's not a noun -- it's an adjective. And since adjectives should never be separated from the nouns they describe by a comma, you  do not need to place one between "architect" and "I.M. Pei."

When to Use "But" or "Yet" Without a Comma (ACT English)

Rule: when "but" or "yet" is used to separate two adjectives, no comma is needed 

One of the ACT's preferred tricks is to give you a sentence that looks like the following:

Mark Twain's novel Huckleberry Finn is one of the most controversial, yet beloved books in all of American literature.

A. NO CHANGE
B. controversial; yet beloved
C. controversial, yet beloved,
D. controversial yet beloved

Because "controversial" and "beloved" are both adjectives, you do not need to involve a comma anywhere in the phrase, and so the answer must be D.

Be Careful With "Date" Questions (ACT Reading)

ACT Reading questions that ask about dates or time periods often appear deceptively easy. It's easy to assume that all you have to do is go back to the passage and pick out the appropriate date. Even in a reading that includes a number of dates or years, that's pretty straightforward once you find the correct spot in the passage, right? 

Wrong. 

These kinds of questions are actually inference questions in disguise, and answering them often requires you to take information from various parts of the passage and perform some very basic calculations. 

For instance, one ACT passage asks about the time period when a particular kind of glass structure was least likely to be built in the United States. Nowhere in the passage does the author actually come out and state the answer; (s)he only tells us that in the post-World War II period, many glass structures were built in the US but that since 1973, most glass structures have been built in Europe. We can therefore infer that after 1973, most glass structure were LESS likely to be built in the US than they were before. The answer, however, is 1975-1985 -- only an approximation of what's stated in the passage. 

I don't want to suggest that the correct answer will never be directly stated in the passage; sometimes it will. But before you pick an answer just because you remember seeing it in the passage, make sure that it really does fit. 

How to Use an Apostrophe Correctly (ACT English)

This post was inspired by Robin Koerner's little rant in the Huffington Post about his encounter with a job applicant who had a 3.9 GPA but no idea of how to use an apostrophe correctly.

While you can, in real life, break some of the rules the ACT tests without anyone really noticing, you cannot break this one. Sure, your high school or even your college teachers may overlook it, but if you screw this up on your resume or even in an email to a potential employer or college interviewer, it may very well be noticed and count very seriously against you. In many cases, it can lead to a flat-out rejection. Employers actually don't care about your critical-thinking skills unless you can express yourself in basic, coherent English.  If you don't believe me, check out this article from the Washington Post.

Of all the basic rules to mess up, apostrophe usage will stick out the most, so if you learn even one thing while studying for ACT English, please let it be this. Besides, apostrophes are always tested on the ACT; mastering them can get you an easy couple of points.

I've already discussed the rule for it's vs. its in another post and have covered apostrophe usage for other pronouns (you're, that's, we're, they're) on my complete guide to ACT punctuation page, so here I'm just going to stick to nouns.


An "-s" by itself is used to make a noun plural. No apostrophe is needed.

Correct: I have two dogs at home.

Incorrect: I have two dog's at home.


An apostrophe is needed, however, to make a noun possessive -- that is, to indicate that it belongs to someone or something.

Correct: This is my dog's toy. (= This is the toy that belongs to my dog.)

Incorrect: This is my dogs toy.


An apostrophe is also needed when forming a contraction between a noun and the verb "is."

Correct: My dog's not feeling well today. (= My dog is not feeling well today).

Incorrect: My dogs not feeling well today.


The place where most people get tripped up is when dealing with nouns that are both plural and possessive. In these cases, the apostrophe is placed after the "-s."

Correct: These are my dogs' toys. (= These are the toys that belong to my dogs.)

Incorrect: These are my dogs toys.

Incorrect: These are my dog's toys. (= These are the toys that belong to my dog, not my dogs. This version is grammatically correct but changes the meaning of the sentence.)


When you encounter these types of questions on the ACT and are not immediately sure of the answer, you need to break them down into steps.

First you need to determine whether you are talking about something possessive. That will determine whether you need an apostrophe at all.

Next determine whether the noun in question is singular or plural. If it's singular, the apostrophe comes before the "-s;" if it's plural, the apostrophe comes after.

Let's consider the following (real) ACT sentence: 

The sound of the distant honking of these majestic birds always makes me look up.

F. NO CHANGE

G. birds,

H. bird's 

J. birds'

The first thing we need to figure out is whether "birds" should in fact be plural, and word "these" indicates that it should (you wouldn't say "These majestic bird"). So we definitely need an "s-" on the end of "birds." The only question is whether there needs to be an apostrophe.

This is where this question gets a little tricky. The phrase "honking of the birds" does indicate possession, but it takes the place of the apostrophe. We can say either "the majestic honking of the birds" OR "the birds' majestic honking" but not "the majestic honking of the birds'". So no apostrophe, which leaves us with F and G (the answer is F). 

I have to gloat just a little

As Debbie Stier was nice enough to inform me of this morning, a Michael Pollan passage did in fact appear on the June 4th SAT. Apparently it was from A Botany of Desire, a book that I had completely forgotten about, but still, I love it when I predict the authors who show up on the actual test. He's a favorite, so even if they used him this test, that doesn't mean they won't use him again soon.

Shortcut: Paragraph "Main Function" Questions (ACT Reading)

The wording of "main function" questions can be very misleading: after all, they inevitably ask about a the main function of a paragraph in relation to the passage as a whole.

The thing is, though, you don't really have to really have to deal with the entire passage when trying to answer them. You don't even have to deal with the entire paragraph in question; that takes time, which you don't have a lot of. 

You really only have to deal with three very important sentences: the last sentence of the previous paragraph and the first two sentences of the paragraph in question, focusing particularly on any major transition words (but, however, furthermore, etc.) that indicate the relationship between the preceding idea and the current idea. 

The first sentence of the paragraph referred to in the question will often not give you the information, so it's important that you read the first two sentences. Normally the ACT asks about paragraphs that shift the focus from one idea to another, so be particularly on the lookout for anything that suggests contradiction. 

Let's look at an example:

Official Guide, Test 3, Section 3, Question 17 (p. 469) 

Question: The main function of the sixth paragraph (lines 58-64) in relation to the passage as  whole is most likely to provide: 

Strategy: The first thing we're going to do is reread the last sentence of the previous paragraph and the first sentence of the current paragraph. We do not need to consider any other information. 

Last sentence of paragraph 5: 

"As author Daniel Chiras says, more companies are recognizing that 'technologies that produce by-products society cannot absorb are essentially failed technologies.'"

First two sentences of paragraph 6: 

"So far, we've talked about recycling within a circle of companies. But what happens when a product leaves the manufacturer and passes to the consumer and finally to the trash can?"

It's important to stress here that we don't even need to know what's going on in the passage to figure out what the function of Paragraph 6 is. First, there's no apparent relationship between the two paragraphs: 6 does not build on 5 in any way. In addition, the phrasing "So far we've talked about..., but what happens...?" tell us that the author is summing up what he's discussed so far and then moving the discussion in a new direction. So we need to look for an answer that says something along those lines.

F. evidence to support Daniel Chiras's statement in lines 54-57.

No, it doesn't even mention Chiras. As we said, there's no relationship.

G. A transition between the two main points discussed in the passage. 

Well, we don't know how many points there are in the passage, but we do know that 6 is a transition that redirects the passage to discuss what is probably another very important point. 

We'll keep this as a possibility.

H. a conclusion to the author's discussion about a no-waste economy. 

It's not a conclusion; it's moving to a new idea. So C is out.

J. A summary of the author's main idea

If you'd just read the first sentence of Paragraph 6, you might think this could work. But no, the author clearly indicates that (s)he is moving to a new idea. So while the author does summarize, that's not the main point of the paragraph.

Which leaves us with G. 

"Would of" and "Could of" do not exist (ACT English)

It's ACT week!

Since the last SAT of the year is upon us, I'm going to focus exclusively on the ACT for the next week, starting with this simple little rule that's shown up somewhere on pretty much every ACT English section I've ever seen.

Here goes:

Would of, could of, should of, and might of = Wrong (no exceptions!)

Would have, could have, should have and might have = Right

A lot of people get tricked because in spoken English, "have" is either pronounced as "of" or the words are contracted so that "would have" becomes "would've." But that last part is still a condensed version of the word "have" rather than than an actual "of." The ACT knows that the distinction can't be made by ear and likes to try to fool you.

So:

Incorrect: If my parents had not forced me to attend Chinese school, I never would of developed an appreciation for the traditions of Chinese New Year.

Correct: If my parents had not forced me to attend Chinese school, I never would have developed an appreciation for the traditions of Chinese New Year.

Question of the Day 6/4

Since Blogger appears to have messed up the spacing on my "Question of the Day" page beyond immediate repair, I'm posting the question here:

Some of the artist's ideas seem mainly intended to challenge conventional wisdom about painting, and they are not implemented in any practical way.

(A) painting, and they are not implemented in any practical way
(B) painting rather than to be implemented in any practical way
(C) painting but not being implemented in any practical way
(D) painting, although their practical implementation does not
         occur
(E) painting, they are not practically implemented 

Please scroll to the bottom of this page for the answer

Long since = Right (SAT Writing)

I find it hilarious that the Official Guide to the SAT states  that there are no trick answers on the test. I don't know who wrote those words, but I'm sure he or she hard an awfully hard time keeping a straight face while writing them.

I'm convinced that when the College Board tests out its Writing questions, it's not just checking to see which errors various percentages of test-takers are likely to get right but also which correct constructions test-takers likely to think are incorrect.

Consider the following (College Board) sentence: The dolls in the collection, all more than two hundred years old, had been carefully carved for children long since gone" (Official Guide, 2nd edition, p. 777 ) 

The answer to the question is E (No error), but nearly all of my students have missed that question because they couldn't get over how weird that phrase sounded.

At first I thought that the phrase, although very tricky, just happened to be something that the College Board had stuck in that one particular question. I was wrong. As I looked through more CB tests, including PSATs, I started to notice it occurring on a semi-regular basis, and I realized that it was being used as a sort of official trick answer. 

So if you see "long since" (or even just "long") pop up in a question, ignore it! And moreover, there's a good chance that the answer is actually E.


Btw, my apologies for not having a question of the day up. Blogger had flipped out on me and is doing truly bizarre things with spacing. I'll get it up as soon as I can figure out a way to make things look decent.

Be nice to your reader, and your reader will be nice to you

You have to feel kind of sorry for the people who read SAT essays. They have to sit in a room for hours reading essay after essay after essay (after essay after essay) on Hitler, Martin Luther King, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye, with the occasional Frankenstein or ancient Chinese proverb reference thrown in for variety. Or, in the case of ACT readers, "Why a fifth year of high school is *not* a good idea."

Not really anyone's idea of a fun afternoon, I'm guessing, not even a high school English teacher's. Hey, they're people too.

Just think: if you were stuck reading all those essays for hours on end, how generous a mood would you be in by the end of the day? I don't think anyone's ever done a study, but I suspect that many readers are somewhat more inclined to be generous with their score for essay #7 than they are for, say, essay #157.

So given that you have no idea whether your essay will in fact be #7 or #157, it would strongly behoove you to be as nice to your reader as you can manage. Or at least try not to annoy him or her too badly. As I always tell my students, if you take pity on your reader, your reader will be more likely to take pity on you.

Here are three ways you can do that:

1) Write neatly

You can manage it just this once. Readers have about two minutes at most to read and score essays. If they're tearing their hair out just trying to decipher what you wrote, which way do you think they're more likely to go (subconsciously, of course) if you're on the border between a 4 and a 5?

2) Make your argument easy to follow

You are writing a persuasive essay, not trying to win a poetry award. Some big words are good, but not to the point that they obscure what you're trying to say. If your readers can't get the gist of your argument almost instantaneously, they will not go to go back over your essay, parsing the details the way your English teacher might and trying to figure out what you meant to say. Instead, they'll just give you a lower score.

Using transitions such as "in addition," "however," and "likewise" can go a long way toward reducing the amount of work a reader has to do to figure out your argument.

3) Use an example they haven't already seen 150 times

That means no Hitler or MLK if you can manage to avoid them. That's not to say that a stupendously written essay that uses one of these examples won't get a 12, but try not to push your luck. If your readers are even mildly engaged by your writing, they'll be much more favorably disposed toward you.

Write about literature in the present tense (SAT Essay)

I'm quite not sure why, but an awful lot of English teachers suddenly seem to be neglecting to discuss the literary present in class. To reiterate:

When you write about a work of literature, use the present tense. 

Do not use the past tense. Do not flip back and forth between past tense and the present tense. Just stick to the present tense.

For example:

Incorrect: In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece of American literature, Jay Gatsby's idealization of Daisy led to his ultimate downfall.

Correct: In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece of American literature, Jay Gatsby's idealization of Daisy leads to his ultimate downfall.

In case you're wondering, I think the justification for this rule is that since literary characters and events are fictional, they exist in a sort of perpetual, eternal present and should therefore be discussed in the present tense.

If the rest of your essay is stellar, writing about a work of literature in the past tense on the SAT essay won't necessarily break you, but it certainly won't win you any points either.