Author offers tips for new Standard Aptitude Test

Jeff Benson

“Analogy” is to “eliminate” as “essay” is to ... Dude. This isn’t

cool.

High school juniors had a rougher time than expected in comparing

apples to oranges, prompting the national College Board in 2002 to

take the fruit -- and all other analogies -- completely out of the

Standard Aptitude Test.

In March, approximately 1.5-million high school students

nationwide will take the SAT 2005, which will merge elements from the

SAT I and SAT II and will test on three separate areas: math,

critical reading and essay writing. What this means, based on the 200

to 800 scale, is that 1,600 is no longer a perfect score and 2,400

is.

David Benjamin Gruenbaum, author of “New SAT 2005: Inside Out!”

spoke about the revised test during a Monday seminar at Borders

Bookstore in Costa Mesa. Gruenbaum and his wife, Heather

Chagnon-Gruenbaum are owners of the Irvine-based private education

and test preparation company Ahead of the Class.

“The most important tip I can give is to prepare early for the

test,” Gruenbaum said. “That’s why I got the book out so early.

Students should familiarize themselves with what’s on it.”

The new test also comes with several additions. The math portion

includes new third-year math/algebra II problems, and the reading

portion has added shorter passages. Test-takers will also be given 35

minutes for multiple choice questions involving sentence and

paragraph construction and 25 minutes to write a persuasive essay on

a random topic, according to https://www.collegeboard.com. Saturday’s

Preliminary Standard Aptitude Test/Natl. Merit Scholarship Qualifying

Test will include similar changes but won’t include an essay portion.

Gruenbaum said he felt “New SAT 2005: Inside Out!” is more

entertaining than most test preparation books. Aside from the

practice-makes-perfect repetition of reading passages and math

problems, the book also features colorful cartoon characters called

“The Incapables.”

One “Incapable” character, spend-happy “Jasmine,” likes to discuss

mall-to-female ratios. Another character, “Thor,” believes SAT stands

for “Surfing and Tanning.”

“The reason kids like it is that it’s very quick but also

humorous,” he said. “I guess I’m the original SAT comedian.”

Chagnon-Gruenbaum said she wrote two of the book’s reading

sections.

“So many students see these enormous books on the shelves with

highfalutin language,” Chagnon-Gruenbaum said. “David writes at the

kids’ level and he does a couple different explanations for each

subject.”

Borders customer Debbie Dierkes said she bought a copy of the book

for her 15-year-old daughter, Lily, because test time is approaching.

Lily’s a sophomore at Newport Harbor High School.

“The price [$12.95] is right and it looks like something that’ll

interest her,” Dierkes said. “It’s something that she’ll be able to

do on her own because she’s fairly ambitious.”

An advocate of the changes since 2001, Gruenbaum said he began

offering up suggestions to revise the SAT when University of

California officials talked about dropping the test altogether. He

said he may have influenced the College Board to make the changes

because of his persistent column- and letter-writing.

Gruenbaum said he felt that the two tests overlapped each other

and that a single day test would reduce the number of tests that

California high school students would have to take.