According to Collegeboard, college admission officers are allowed to assess the raw work of students. The essays will be written in just 25 minutes using No. 2 pencils. As rough drafts written under test conditions, they will have scratched-out words, erasures, sentence fragments, misspellings, grammar mistakes and handwriting that isn't necessarily pretty.
These raw essays will be available online to the admissions officers of colleges that receive the students' scores for the SAT college entrance exam.
College officials will be able to compare them to the carefully polished essays on applications, evaluate the essays themselves or use them for English placement.
"It wouldn't surprise me if we saw a whole range of different uses," said Andy Lutz, vice president of research and development for The Princeton Review, an education company whose products and services include test preparation. "I hope they don't overly weigh 25 minutes on the SAT."
Welcome to the new SAT, which will be given for the first time March 12. The deadline for regular registration is Feb. 7.
While the old SAT had just math and verbal sections, the new one also has a writing section, including the 25-minute essay written on a topic not revealed until the student opens the test booklet. It will be the first task students face.
The College Board also has renamed the verbal section as critical reading and made other changes, including adding higher-level math.
The new SAT will have a top score of 2400 -- 800 points for each of the three sections -- instead of the old test's 1600, or 800 points for each of two sections. It is three hours and 45 minutes long, an increase of 45 minutes.
About a third of the writing score will be the essay; the rest will be multiple-choice grammar and other questions.
Yesterday was to have been the last day for the old SAT, and, just as a decade ago when the College Board made its last big changes to the test, more students signed up.
About 380,000 students nationwide were scheduled to take the test yesterday, an increase of at least 50,000 over a typical January, said Brian O'Reilly, executive director of SAT information services for the College Board.
There's been conflicting advice about whether students in the high school Class of 2006 should take both the old and new tests. Regardless, test prep companies report the changes have given them a boom year.
Jennifer Karan, national director of SAT and ACT programs for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, said that for the first time the number of juniors preparing outpaced the number of seniors.
A College Board survey of 350 colleges showed that many plan to use the writing results: Nearly three-fourths of admissions officers said they would use the writing scores; about a third said they would read all of the essays of those they are admitting; and about a fifth said they would read most of the essays.
About a third also said they would use the writing exam in determining freshman English placement.
Despite the survey, O'Reilly said colleges may be less likely than reported in the survey to read the essays.
"I think colleges will very quickly figure out that the score that two English teachers gave to this essay is at least as valuable, if not more so, as having one of your own staff who may not even be an English teacher read the essay and assign it some sort of value."
In using the essays, O'Reilly gave this caution: "For admissions, the writing score is highly reliable. The essay by itself is much less so. We've been telling colleges, if you're making an important decision like admissions, a high-stakes decision, use the writing score. Don't use the essay."
The SAT is the most popular college entrance exam in Pennsylvania, where 74 percent of the high school Class of 2004 took it.
But colleges generally accept the results of either the SAT or the ACT, which about 9 percent of Pennsylvania high school students in the Class of 2004 took last year.
The ACT has added a 30-minute essay, which it will give for the first time Feb. 12. But the essay, which also will be available via the Internet to colleges, is optional. The required portions of its test are divided into four parts: math, reading, English and science.
Rose Rennekamp, vice president of communications for ACT, said its survey of 2,000 colleges showed that only 19 percent will require a writing score and another 20 percent will recommend it for the high school Class of 2006.
The SAT essays will be scanned into a computer and then read online by trained graders who will spend about three minutes on each essay. That is time-consuming, so results will come later. It will take 30 days to get the March SAT results. After that, results will be available in 16 days instead of the current 13.
Locally, there is no unanimity in how colleges will regard the writing score.
At the University of Pittsburgh, which received more than 18,000 applications last year, Betsy Porter, director of admissions and financial aid, said it will require the writing test -- whether SAT or ACT -- for the high school Class of 2006 but will not use the score routinely in admissions. That may change in a couple of years once the scores are better understood.
And while the admissions committee won't look up the essay for everyone, she said the committee may access it in cases where they think it would be helpful.
Carnegie Mellon University, which already required a standardized writing test, will require applicants to take the SAT or the ACT with writing.
Mike Steidel, CMU's director of admission, said CMU hasn't decided how to handle the SAT essay.
CMU's application has two essays as well as some short written answers, he said. "To be honest, we think our essays are going to be more interesting to read than what this essay is all about."
He said CMU might look at the SAT essay to better understand the skills of students who are non-native English speakers.
La Roche College is "not going to use it as a basis for admissions or placement for at least three years," said Tom Hassett, director of freshman and international admissions.
Hassett first wants to see how the scores relate to success in college.
J. Donald Williams, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Chatham College, anticipates reading the SAT essays.
"We are taking the stance that more information is better," he said.
Paul-James Cukanna, director of admissions at Duquesne University, said the school is planning to review the essays and integrate the writing score into making decisions for the fall 2006.
"The ability to write well is very important in the education process and also in any career," he said.
At St. Vincent College, David Collins, assistant vice president for admission and financial aid, said students may send their SAT essays if they choose, but the writing score won't be factored into admission. The college will continue to use its own application essay.
"I didn't like the idea that a student would be required to perform in such a short period of time. I felt that our purpose is better served by having students spend their time taking their thoughts and crafting them into an essay," he said.
Some students think the essay will give them a chance to demonstrate their strongest skills.
"I like to write. I think it's a plus for me," said Vincent Wooten of Penn Hills, a junior at the Neighborhood Academy in East Liberty.
Jessica Bolden of North Braddock, a junior at Woodland Hills High School, said she thinks the new test gives her a chance to perform better than the old. She's glad the analogies -- like elastic is to flexible as diamond is to hard -- are gone.
"Every student hates the analogies," she said.
Brandi Lockerman of West Deer, a junior at Deer Lakes High School, said, ''The writing part will give you a better idea of what to expect in college."
She said she has already completed Algebra 2, so she feels prepared for the harder math questions, too.
Just as the number of registered test-takers went up for yesterday's scheduled test, O'Reilly expects, as was true a decade ago, a lower-than-usual number will take the test in March.
Should students sign up to be first or postpone it? Some say students should neither avoid it nor rush into it.
"Every student should test when they're ready," said John Brady. senior education manager of higher education services for the College Board.
