By wpengine November 17, 2003
Beginning in 2005, the SAT I, the well-known standardized test for college admissions, will undergo several changes to its structure. These changes will affect current high school sophomores and will include an additional third section, with an essay and sentence corrections, and more upper-level math questions. The addition of a third 800 point section will be the biggest change to the test — which will bring the total possible score on the SAT to 2400 points, up from the current 1600. The new writing section will include multiple-choice questions about grammar and word usage as well as an essay. The essay topic will require students to take a position on a given issue and to support their arguments with examples. The essay will occupy about 25 minutes of the test and most likely will be the first task students have to tackle. The multiple-choice questions will test a student’s ability to identify errors and make corrections to sentences. Other major changes to the test include the elimination of analogies and the addition of short reading passages alongside the longer passages in the reading section. In addition, the mathematics section will test students on more advanced math — including principles learned in a typical Algebra II high school class. “The new test is more comprehensive,” said Leah Strugatz ’04, who tutors students at Kaplan Test Prep. “Sections most students find the least practical, analogies and quantitative comparisons, are eliminated. The added essay is probably a better indicator of students’ writing ability than college essays,” she said. The costs associated with the new changes in scoring will raise the price of the SAT approximately $10 or $12. The test will last three hours and thirty-five minutes, a half hour longer than the current test. “The results from studies done by other organizations on timed tests also indicate that fatigue does not affect performance on high-stakes tests until the total length of the test exceeds five hours,” the College Board says on its website. “In combination with high school grades, the SAT is the best measure of predicting college retention and graduation, as well as freshman year and cumulative college grades,” according to the College Board. The College Board is revising the SAT in order to “improve the alignment of the test with current curriculum and institutional practices in high school and college. By including a third measure of skills, writing, the new SAT will reinforce the importance of writing throughout a student’s education and will help colleges make better admissions and placement decisions.” More than 100 colleges and universities, including Cornell, plan to require a writing test for admission for students entering college in the fall of 2006. “The test makers are changing the SAT to make it more reflective of the high school curriculum and more predictive of college success. More advanced math is consistent with schools’ push for more students to take four years of math and strong writing skills are essential for college success — particularly in liberal arts subjects. The inclusion of a writing section will also help college admissions officers assess applicants more thoroughly,” said Jon Zeitlin, director of the new SAT for Kaplan. According to Zeitlin, “Kaplan will revise their prep courses to reflect the new changes.” “We will be making significant adjustments to our test prep courses and materials to make sure that students will be as prepared as possible for the change. It will be crucial for students to adjust their preparation for the new test, in particular for the new writing section,” he said. Zeitlin added that the new material is similar to the SAT II writing and math tests, so both Kaplan instructors and students will review material that is familiar, but in a new context. “[Students] will need to learn how to quickly but carefully read and interpret the prompts, quickly decide if they agree or disagree with the statement, plan their essay in 3-5 minutes, focus on the main points of each paragraph and write topic sentences, include supporting details and leave enough time to proofread their essays. They will also have to change how they study for the advanced algebra questions,” Zeitlin added. C. William Heffner, a college counselor at Ithaca High School, said the new test “could be a benefit to students. The SATs are more accurately reflecting what colleges need to know, what high schools are teaching.” He explained that Ithaca High School does not offer any standardized test preparation as part of its curriculum but he claims that the school has a challenging curriculum, which prepares students well for exams like the SAT. Heffner believes the addition of the writing section may scare away students who do not need a writing test for college admissions. “Students might look more favorably on the ACT,” he said, referring to another standardized test that is popular outside of the Northeast. “Writing an essay scares people,” he said, adding that most students probably would prefer a multiple-choice format. In the fall of 2004, preceding the first new SAT, students will take a PSAT that will be similar to the new test but without the essay. The PSAT will include harder math topics such as absolute value and exponential growth, but not quadratic functions, which will appear on the SAT, according to the College Board. Beginning in March 2005, the College Board will administer the new SAT. Students often take the College Board’s SAT II: Writing Test if colleges they are applying to require a writing test. That test will be discontinued once the new SAT becomes available, although versions of the writing test will still be accessible to colleges that want to use the test for admissions. Critics of the new test accuse the College Board of attempting to change what students learn in school. Although the Board has no legal power over school curricula, the influence of Board tests on college admissions nevertheless may cause some education reform. The College Board’s website includes a 24-page brochure called “The New SAT and Your School System,” which outlines the changes as a result of current classroom practice. “You may wish to review some of your academic priorities and sequencing to see if your college-preparatory curriculum is structured to maximize benefits to your college-bound students,” it says, before giving a detailed list of suggestions to improve the curriculum to cater to the skills required for the new test. “By making the ability to write well a measure by which applicants will be evaluated, schools will focus more attention on teaching writing in grades K-12. With this renewed focus, students should arrive on campus better prepared for college courses, and the need for remediation at colleges should be reduced,” according to the College Board. Before the test, the College Board plans to send materials to schools to help prepare students for the new test in the classroom, especially for the essay section, which they might not have seen otherwise. Another potential concern raised by critics is whether the new test will measure what students have learned in school, rather than their general-reasoning abilities. In response to questions regarding whether educational inequality could effect scoring, Prof. Steve Morgan, sociology, did not believe the new test would have a large impact for most students applying to competitive colleges. “I regard such tests as somewhat useful for prospective students and for universities, as they help move the admissions process along. However, since the vast majority of colleges in the U.S. are not selective in admissions, I do not expect any modest changes such as these to have any substantial effect
By wpengine November 17, 2003
University Hill’s oldest house and one of Ezra Cornell’s homes, popularly known to students as Llenroc, hosted Historic Ithaca’s Courtney Crawford Memorial Lecture, on Saturday. “The University Hill Historic District: Influences, Architecture & Legacy,” featured a variety of speakers on the historic aspects of the district. University Hill is the City of Ithaca’s newest historic district, and includes the area bounded by University Ave., Stewart Ave. and Cornell Rd. The area is destined for both national and state level designations as an historic area, and will be expanded southward to include Cascadilla Park Rd. and the City cemetery, allowing the area to compete for federal funds, according to Janet Shure, preservation director of Historic Ithaca. Historic Ithaca, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the historic built environment in Tompkins County and the Finger Lakes region, owns both the Clinton House and the State Theatre. Crawford was president of the organization’s Board of Directors, and helped the group acquire and renovate the Clinton House. After the lecture, attendees wandered about Llenroc while Barbara Ebert grad spoke about her research on the nearby cemetery’s unique evolution from a small, informally-acquired burial ground to a more elaborately landscaped site. When cemetery proponents wished to purchase land to expand the cemetery in the mid-1800s, Ebert said, they auctioned lots from the land they did not yet own, then used the proceeds to buy it. The cemetery was transformed into a “rural” cemetery in the 1830s, much like the famous Mt. Auburn cemetery near Boston. Popular as a sign of an enlightened community, the “rural” cemetery was intended as an enjoyable space for the public to walk along the curvy and hilly paths and to “contemplate nature,” Ebert said. The cemetery was later altered in the style of lawn cemeteries, with monuments and plantings gaining importance over now-restrained landscaping. The current cemetery, though suffering from vandalism and damage from fallen trees, retains both cemetery styles, Ebert said. Historic preservationists are often accused of the “George Washington slept here” phenomenon, Carol Sisler, past director of Historic Ithaca, said in her talk on the Cornell and Treman families presence in the area. Ironically, “only a house in which [Ezra Cornell] never slept has been saved,” Sisler said, explaining that the University’s founder died before his only surviving home — now Llenroc — was completed. The Cornell family, however, went on to have a few homes in the University Hill area, and sold off much land in the district. The family’s financial straits and local recession made landholding a paltry income source, Sisler said. The Town and Gown Club, an intellectual and social club for members of the Cornell and Ithaca communities, was housed in a building on Stewart Ave. designed by William Henry Miller, architect of Uris Library. “It was a place where they could discuss intellectual issues as well as town and gown concerns,” Shure said. The club closed before World War II, but Shure noted that recent speeches by President Jeffrey S. Lehman ’77 harken back to the club’s ideas of cooperation between Ithaca and the University. Another prominent family, the Tremans, developed Cascadilla Park Rd. on Arts and Crafts ideals of “civic improvement” and “the simple life,” according to Christine O’Malley, art history professor at Ithaca College. Robert H. ’78 and Robert E. ’09 Treman were both trustees of Cornell. Sisler spoke about the other notable buildings in the area that were homes for members of the Treman family and designed by Miller. A trio of Treman family homes — two of which, the Kahin Center and 660 Stewart Ave., still exist — were situated so that each would enjoy a distinct view of the surrounding area. Redbud Woods, now the site of a controversial parking lot proposed by the University, was intended as a public site relatively free of trees and brush, Shure said. “Ideally,” Shure said, “you would thin out [the woods] and try to reestablish the views that were there.” Referring to one plan to minimize the possible parking lot’s noise, Shure said, “putting in a line of spruce trees is totally antithetical to that intent.” “shocked and surprised.” One of his teammates, Joanne Wall JGSM ’04, said that she “didn’t expect to win, given the tough competition from the hotel school, but as a team we pulled it together.” The rest of the quartet was made up of Alison Reichert JGSM ’04 and Annie Oh JGSM ’04. Overall, four of the teams were from the JGSM, while the other three represented the hotel school. Each of the teams was made up of four members. They all gathered just before 5 p.m. to get their instructions from the event coordinator, Alex Tse ’97, before the cooking began. Each team was allowed use of any of the communal ingredients provided for the event. These supplies included a wide variety of fresh vegetables and herbs and common pantry stock items such as bacon, chicken, cheeses, pastas and red wine. In addition, teams were allowed to bring up to $25 of their own ingredients. They were each provided with chef’s whites and a cooking station that contained all the necessary tools and utensils to enact their culinary creations. The competition was almost exactly like the cult Iron Chef television program often shown late at night on the Food Network. The only changes were that the teams were notified of the main ingredient three days in advance, and the cooking time was expanded to two hours from the TV show’s one. Tse incorporated many details from the show, including the music at the beginning and end of the program, which he played from a laptop and speakers set up in the middle of the kitchen. The teams were judged in four categories: presentation, taste, originality and cleanliness. One of the judges was Mike Washburn, executive sous chef at Wegmans of Ithaca. Before the competition began, he said he would be “observing cleanliness and organization while cooking, though tasting [would] determine a lot.” Washburn earned his gastronomic expertise through many years in the industry following his degree from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Most recently, he owned the Bull Moose Bistro in Red Lodge, Mo., before moving to Ithaca a few months ago. Another judge was Dano Hutnik, former proprietor of Dano’s in Ithaca, who is currently building a new restaurant outside the city on Cayuga Lake. Though he had never cooked with ostrich in any of his restaurants, he “ate it about four or five years ago, when ostrich was the thing on menus.” Hutnik noted that “it never really caught on, kind of like bear, elk and kangaroo,” despite being “a very healthy lean meat with no cholesterol.” The other two judges were Dean of Students Kent Hubbell ’69 and Ken Cowlan, owner of the Lite 97.3 radio station. When he first entered the kitchen, Cowlan noticed that “the aroma [was] overwhelming.” “Even if you weren’t hungry when you came in here, you’d work up an appetite fast,” he added. The time allotted for cooking went by very quickly. Most teams spent the better part of the first hour preparing their ingredients by chopping vegetables, reducing stocks and tenderizing the ostrich meat. Some teams deep-fried vegetables and flatbreads to use in their presentation, while others used their broilers to roast peppers, brown puff pastry or candy almonds. The organizational techniques ran the gambit. Some teams arrived with typed gameplans broken down by team member, while others were heard volunteering to take on a particular task ad hoc as the team leader announced what needed to be done. Most teams did not begin plating their meals until the last few minutes