COMPUTER GENERATION SWEATS SAT PEN ESSAY.

Byline: Lisa M. Sodders Staff Writer

High school students around the country have spent months preparing for - and fretting over - a new addition to the SAT college entrance exam: the 25-minute essay test.

More than 330,000 students nationwide will take the new version of the SAT being offered for the first time Saturday.

The nearly four-hour exam, formerly called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, has always been stressful. But the idea of organizing thoughts quickly and putting them down on paper clearly and concisely in less than 30 minutes has many college-bound students a little unnerved.

``I'm terrified,'' admitted Taft High School student Austria Smith, 16, of Los Angeles. ``It's not like I don't know how to write an essay. But when you've got a time limit, you feel a lot of pressure. I worry about not finishing on time.''

Smith is among many Los Angeles Unified School District students who have signed up for district-sponsored courses after school and on weekends to prepare them to take the SAT, which will also be offered in May.

``I haven't had mass hysteria at Canoga Park,'' said Suzette Rosso, college counselor at Canoga Park High School, where about 60 juniors have signed up for the SAT prep course.

``The students have an opportunity to do a pretest at the prep class, which will include the essay and give them a real sense of what kinds of things they (test givers) are asking for. And the SAT is something you can repeat, so if you don't like your score, you can retake it.''

The essay test is the first major change since 1994, when the College Board, which owns and administers the SAT, removed antonyms and added longer reading passages.

It is the first time in the exam's 79-year history that an essay test will be given.

With pressure from the University of California, which threatened to drop the SAT as part of its admissions criteria, the College Board added the essay amid concerns from college faculties and business people about the quality of high school students' writing skills.

The new SAT is in three parts, with a possible perfect score of 2,400 points, instead of the previous 1,600. The new 800-point writing section is in addition to an 800-point math section and an 800-point critical reading section.

The 25-minute timed essay will account for 30 percent of the writing- section score, while 70 percent will be based on multiple-choice questions.

The essay will be scored by two readers on a scale of 1 to 6, with 6 being the highest. If the two scores differ by more than one point, the essay will be scored by a third reader, said Caren Scoropanos, a spokeswoman with the College Board.

Hiring the readers, who must have taught high school or college writing for at least three years, also bumped up the cost of the test from $29.50 to $41.50, Scoropanos said.

More than 330,000 students nationwide are signed up to take the 3-hour, 45-minute test Saturday, the first of seven SAT sessions. About 40,000 more signed up for the first session last year. Scoropanos attributed the difference to an earlier date this year and student reluctance to be the first to take the new test. A total of 2.2 million students will eventually take the test this year.

Elenna Turner, college counselor at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, said she thinks the difference in the new test has been hyped too much by test-prep companies to drum up more business for their products.

``If students are taking Honors or AP English, they're taught to write, and there's a lot of classroom writing going on,'' Turner said. ``Teachers found out if they send all assignments home, you might not know who's writing it.''

El Camino student Christina Chow, 16, of West Hills plans to take the test Saturday. Her main concern is ``whether I'll have enough supporting evidence for the essay.''

But a generation raised on computers and keyboards has another issue: legible penmanship. Chow said she's not planning to use cursive writing for her essay.

``I just write neat,'' she said. ``I'm used to writing in print. I write slower when I write in cursive.''

Scoropanos said the College Board readers aren't expecting perfection from the essay.

``It is expected to be a first draft,'' Scoropanos said. ``We recognize that it won't be polished. Spelling, grammar and handwriting will not affect the score unless (mistakes) are so pervasive that it's unable to be read, and every effort is made to read the essays.''

Lisa M. Sodders, [phone]

lisa.sodders(at)dailynews.com

SAMPLE QUESTION

Here is a sample SAT essay question:

Do people have to be highly competitive in order to succeed? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience and observations.

- Source: The College Board

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

(color) At Taft High School, 11th-grader Nurit Zollchian listens to essay-writing tips as she prepares for the new SAT test.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

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SAMPLE ESSAY QUESTION (see text)