NY Times Op-Ed Contributor: "MORE than once, it has occurred to me that I'm the only person ever to forget her own SAT scores. While I'm generally no good with numbers, this memory lapse may have been intentional: I've always been able to recall just enough to know that my scores were low compared with those of my boarding school classmates - I graduated from Groton School in 1993 - and compared with those of my three siblings.
Recently, while talking to my older sister, I mentioned my SAT haziness. Without hesitating, she said, 'You got 1180.' She also remembers her own scores (1380) and those of our younger sister (1440) and younger brother (1400). My older sister is a well-adjusted person with a successful career, so of course having come in third out of four siblings doesn't matter to her at all. She does, however, feel compelled to announce, on the infrequent occasions when the topic of the SAT arises, that our younger siblings' higher scores are misrepresentative because they took the test after the scoring was adjusted in 1995. But, really, not that it matters.
Now the SAT is about to change again, and the biggest change is the inclusion of an essay. I applaud this addition, and not just because I'm pretty sure it would have raised my score. It's a positive development because - unlike the verbal analogies about to be eliminated - the essay will test a skill that really does matter both during and outside of school. Not once as an adult have I needed to know that, as one SAT-practice Web site tortuously explained, 'impecunious' is to 'money' as 'verify' is to 'doubtful.' But over and over and over, I've had to write."