Elena 
Calvin is taking the SAT exam tomorrow. I was bemoaning the fact that he has put very little time into preparing for it, (concentrating his efforts on prom preparation instead). This might be his saving grace as it turns out. See this fascinating article by Ethan Campbell about the SAT essay portion.
Some excerpts:
The Advocate (CUNY Graduate Center):
Kaplan’s guide to the 2007 SAT, on the other hand, says that the 25-minute essay “should range between 300 to 400 words . . . If your essay is too short, no matter how well written, it could mean the difference between a low 3 or 4 and a 5 or 6” (italics mine). Length, it turns out, is the single most important factor in determining a standardized essay’s grade. In a New York Times article last year, an M.I.T. professor claimed the ability to determine SAT essay scores from across the room, without reading a single word. Backtracking to make judicious cuts, as I did, is roundly condemned by every guide as a cardinal sin.
I tell my students, “Don’t write according to a formula. There are many different ways to structure an essay, and the one you choose should depend on its context, content, and voice.” The Sparknotes guide to the SAT says, “No matter what topic you end up writing about, the organization of your essay should be the same.” The SAT’s preferred method of organization, as anyone who’s endured an AP English class will tell you, is the white-bread five-paragraph essay: introductory paragraph, thesis statement, three paragraphs of evidence, and a conclusion restating the thesis. A quick survey of the op-ed pages of every major newspaper in America reveals that approximately zero percent of professional writers actually use this persuasive strategy. But Sparknotes proposes no alternative. My structural choice, a series of short, related anecdotes hinting at a broader abstract concept, is not worthy of mention.
When my students make grammar, spelling, or punctuation mistakes, I subtract points from their grades. Too many mistakes, and they fail. The first page of the writing test guidelines on the GRE Web site says, “Spelling or grammatical errors will not affect your score.” The SAT’s official guidelines, to their credit, claim that spelling and syntax will play a “minor role” in the graders’ determinations, but it was hard to see them playing any role at all in the 20 top-scoring SAT essays released by the College Board this past August. Many contained glaring spelling errors that would have drawn red marks from any self-respecting copy editor: “percieve,” “hinderance,” “elluded,” etc. My own attention to grammatical detail, while relatively automatic, may have drawn my attention away from more important matters . . . like writing as many words as possible regardless of quality.
“Now that I’ve supported my thesis with three pieces of evidence, let me restate: the SAT and GRE writing exams promote bad writing. The strategies and skills I teach my freshman composition students are directly opposed to those needed to earn a high score on a standardized writing test. This wouldn’t matter much if the madness ended at the test itself. But often the ‘skills’ needed to score well also end up getting taught in high school classrooms, in an insidious phenomenon known as ‘teaching to the test.’ It is a phenomenon that forces me, every fall, to stand before groups of otherwise high-achieving teenagers and say, in the words of Yoda: ‘You must unlearn . . . what you have learned.'”