The new SAT: students show off skills.

Believe it or not, after extensive media coverage of the new SAT and its new essay, which was expected to instill great fear in all students, there has been lot of positive discussion about the test, which was administered the first time on March 12.

"Students appreciate the different ways to showcase their skills through writing," says Caren Scoropanos, a spokeswoman for the organization that administers the test.

People in the test-prep business are also appreciative of the new test. "The fear and anxiety associated with changes in the SAT are good for our business," Andy Lutz, vice president for program development at the Princeton Review, told the Washington Post.

Some educators are troubled though that the new test, which features more teachable skills, will continue to widen the gap between those who can afford to take a test prep course and those who can't, rendering it unfair.

While the College Board is not requiring juniors to take the new SAT test if they already took the old test, their fate still lies in the college of their choice, which might require them to retake the test.

"For the most part though, colleges are not requiring that they retake the test," Scoropanos says. "They are being flexible and the College Board is encouraging that flexibility."

Of course there is nothing stopping students from taking the new test to improve their scores on the old test. A perfect score on the new test would be a 2400. While the old test had two sections, each scored on a 200-800 point scale, the new one has three sections: writing, critical reading and math. Vocabulary analogies and quantitative comparisons have been eliminated, while grammar and reading questions are new, along with an essay.

While there has been extensive criticism of the SAT saying it points out a discrepancy in skill levels, Chris Black says that this does nothing to address the inequity in education.

"It just pretends that it doesn't exist," says Chris Black, author of McGraw Hill's SAT I. "Or worse, it pretends the skills assessed by the SAT aren't important. Of course, the ability to read well, to write well and to reason well should be the center of any good education."

His book focuses on solid academic critical reading skills, persuasive writing skills and mathematical reasoning skills at the heart of the new SAT, not the test-taking tricks for which big test-prep companies are known.

"Those who are concerned about the 'teachability' of the SAT should simply consider the alternative: testing only innate skills. In fact, this is what the original SAT was criticized for," says Black. "I guess you can't please everyone."