Back in the dark ages, when I took the SAT, the total score you could achieve was a 1600--you could get up to an 800 in math and verbal respectively.  The verbal section was composed of analogies (which I sort of loved, but were admittedly very difficult and fairly subjective), and there wasn't really a grammar section.  In fact, the way that colleges learned about students' writing skills was by requiring an SAT II subject test that included an essay and grammar multiple choice.  I like standardized testing, which may make me a disturbed individual, but it has always made good sense to me--working within a set a rules on well circumscribed content. I appreciated some of the changes made in 2005 because I think that writing (composition and structure) should be an integral part of this kind of standardized assessment. I could even tolerate the sentence completions that had replaced my beloved analogies; in a lot of ways, I felt they were just a dumbed down version of the analogies, but they definitely tested contextual reasoning and vocabulary.  For many students (when I was younger, my classmates, and now my tutoring clients), studying for the Sats was the first time that they were required to master a substantial list of words (often thousands of them). Although this was no doubt nerve-wracking and a major annoyance, it unquestionably refined young people's use of language and made a huge difference in how they wrote and spoke.  I thought the critical reading sections on both of the earlier versions could be difficult, and often a bit arbitrary, but they definitely offered an opportunity to evaluate how people reason about and interpret what they read.  Perhaps as significant as the mastery of vocabulary required by the analogies/sentence completions, the new 2005 test required an essay--I thought this was a great idea, although I would have liked to see a more sophisticated scoring rubric.  As far as I could tell, if the 2005 test was still too standardized to provide an accurate index of a student's actual intellect, the preparation it entailed gave all students a terrific opportunity to gain mastery over the english language and become familiar with the vagaries of grammar and punctuation (finally, because many schools don't teach this comprehensively).  All this being said, I am meaningfully disappointed in the content and structure of the newest incarnation of the SAT.  The reading section, which is meant to be more evidence-based and relevant has dropped the vocabulary-related questions, which means that students no longer have to master those thousands of words that set them up to be better thinkers and learners.  The critical reading passages have paired questions; in these cases, if you get the first of the pair wrong, it is virtually impossible to get the second one right. They have also added charts and graphs to this section, which few students have confronted in such a context (in high school, it's the kind of thing they see in science or math) and won't until more technical college classes. In my limited experience tutoring for the new SAT (they just administered it for the first time in March 2016), these charts create major anxiety, and even if the related questions are not that hard, virtually all of my students convince themselves that they don't understand the meaning of the charts and graphs. I guess there is an advantage to refining and focusing some of the reading questions, but this is now a painfully hit-or-miss section.  And finally, they have made the essay optional, and the score you get on it isn't even integrated into the overall score.  And the scoring...with all of the sub-scores, and the sub-scores across other sub-scores--it would take a rocket scientist to fully grasp the mechanics of the new scoring system.  I have heard that the College Board made these changes in order to compete with the increasingly successful ACT, but should that really be a priority?  I still miss my analogies... 

Okay, I recognize that the title of this post makes me sound a little pathetic.  But you know what? I am more than willing to own that. There is no companion so constant as a book, so unrelentingly available and compelling. If my passionate love for books compels your pity (that i am a bit of a nerd), well, then the unremitting ecstasy so many people find playing videogames or utilizing the (admittedly awesome) powers of the ever-present Iphone. There is a real sense of power and self-sufficiency in knowing that no matter what happens, no matter what line i get stuck in, how late my plane is delayed, how long a car ride is, how bored i can get--books fix all of that.  to all of you skeptics, and self-identified slow or bad readers, you are cheating yourself.  If you feel that you read too slowly, there is an easy fix for that: just read more.  As an atrocious athlete who has always envied people with innate abilities, I take great comfort in knowing that you can become an expert at reading just by doing it.  It is one of the only skills that can be cultivated this way.  Pick up a good book and get started. If there is anyone out there who doesn't know what to read, just drop me a note on this site, and I'll give you a few suggestions...