Between March and June 2014, more than 1.67 million students from the 2014 graduating class took the SAT, marking a new participation record for the test. At the request of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), the College Board created a special report that allows the association to compare how independent school students fared…

Using a comparative mixed methods approach, this study examines the impact of residential experiences on pupil cognitive and non-cognitive development in year six in England. SAT's results and termly progress data in numeracy and literacy were collected. In addition, a ROPELOC survey, focus groups and interviews were used to assess non-cognitive…

This article investigates gender inequity in the National Merit Scholarship Competition. Results suggest the competition favors males due to their higher mean score on the mathematics section and greater variability on all sections of the PSAT, which shares differential validity concerns with the SAT in terms of gender. These instruments are…

When language is processed, brain activity occurs not only in the classic "language areas" such as Broca's area, but also in areas which control movement. Our systems of understanding, including higher level cognition, are rooted in bodily awareness which needs to be developed as a precursor to intellectual reasoning. Cognition is…

This study explored the extent to which graduate students enrolled in Higher Education courses were proficient at writing. A total sample size of 97 graduate students from programs of Higher Education served as the sample. To assess writing proficiency the SAT II: Writing Test, Part B was used. The graduate students in this sample did not score…

Past research has found that many pre-university L2 learners, having completed an Intensive English Program (IEP) still have difficulty in undertaking various disciplines in English-speaking tertiary institutions and continue to exhibit numerous linguistic problems (Bialystok, 2001, Celce Murcia 2001). The purpose of this paper is to present the…

This study was designed to address two frequent criticisms of the SAT essay--that essay length is the best predictor of scores, and that there is an advantage in using more "sophisticated" examples as opposed to personal experience. The study was based on 2,820 essays from the first three administrations of the new SAT. Each essay was…

In this high-accountability era--one in which there is an expanding movement to condemn teachers for the failures of their schools--teachers teach students who believe writing is primarily an act of complying to a prompt, likely for a state accountability assessment or the troubling 25-minute essay that constitutes less than half of the writing…

In this article we examine student performance on mandated tests in grades 3, 4, and 5 in one state. We focus on this interval, which w e term "the fourth grade window," based on our hypothesis that students in grade four are particularly vulnerable to decrements in achievement. The national focus on the third grade as the critical…