The College Entrance Exam For Art Opens In Shandong (Photo : Getty Images)
Administrators of the SAT Exam in China revamped the university admission test by giving it the most substantial redesign in 10 year. To make up for the shift from math and memory work to more emphasis on reading comprehension, the maximum score was brought back to 1600.
Before the changes, the maximum score for the SAT Exam between 2005 and 2015 was 2400 points, noted China Daily.
As part of the reading comprehension part of the exam, students would need to read longer and more difficult paragraphs, while they also figure out the meaning of certain words in the reading passages. The short sentence-completion questions have been removed and the math problems would have more words, not just numbers.
The purpose of the changes, according to the College Board, is to test students on real-world applications. Only students who would apply in schools that require a writing test would need to go through that part of the exam.
Since the exam is timed, the students must be fast in answering the test. But Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, noted that students who do not speak English at home are at a disadvantage because of the heavier weight of the new extended reading passages.
The same situation applies to students from immigrant families and countries where English is not the first tongue, added education specialists and college admission officials.
These kids often translate in their brain the English text to their native language and revert to English to pick the correct answer, Schaeffer explained. But the College Board said the test is a measure of the student’s skills needed for college and when they start careers, “regardless of geography.”
The three-day exam, also known as "gaokao" is the largest college entrance in the world. In 2009, 10 million high school graduating students took the SAT Exam amid test cheating and flu concerns, reported Xinhua News Agency.
