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3Shed High School Rules

This past spring, College Board officials announced sweeping revisions to the SAT college entrance exam. Key among the changes was that the dreaded five-paragraph essay portion of the test will become entirely optional in 2016.

MIT professor Les Perelman has long been a harsh critic of the essay. In a New York Times Magazine piece, Perelman talked about research he conducted that highlighted the folly of the essay, finding that essay length, fancy words, and a sprinkling of random, esoteric facts all correlate with high essay scores. In that piece and in a subsequent interview on NPR, Perelman recalled how he coached 16 students who were retaking the test after having received mediocre scores on the essay section. The Times reporter Todd Balf writes:

He told them that details mattered but factual accuracy didn't. “You can tell them the War of 1812 began in 1945,” he said. He encouraged them to sprinkle in little-used but fancy words like “plethora” or “myriad” and to use two or three preselected quotes from prominent figures like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, regardless of whether they were relevant to the question asked.

Perelman encouraged them to be long-winded and to fill up the entire test booklet—and the margins and back pages—if they could. The result: 15 of his 16 pupils scored higher than the ninetieth percentile on the essay when they retook the exam, Perelman said. And—most tellingly—he added (in a subsequent interview on Boston's WBUR): “and ...