Taking the revamped test as an adult convinced Elizabeth Kolbert of just how useless it is:
As an adult, I found the test more difficult than I had as a teen and, at the same time, more disappointing. Many of the questions were tricky; some were genuinely hard. But, even at its most challenging, the exercise struck me as superficial. Critical thinking was never called for, let alone curiosity or imagination. Ironically—or was it defensively?—this was most apparent to me while I was blathering on about the Manhattan Project. A study by an instructor at M.I.T. has shown that success on the SAT essay is closely correlated with length: the more words pile up, the higher the score. When, at Advantage Testing, [Debbie] Stier [the author of The Perfect Score Project: Uncovering the Secrets of the SAT] is shown essays that have received top marks, she is horrified. They are, she writes, “terrible.”
The Dish 