SAT: what has changed in 15 years?

[outofbreath]

Short story: I took SAT a long time ago in early 1990s.

I received 540 for the English part and 760 for the Math part. I realize that the English score was rather average, but I had only taken English for a year at the time.

Now I have been hearing that SAT has the infamous essay part.

What exactly is this essay part and who in the world has time to grade them?

[Jamie (K)]

The SAT not only has an essay part now, but the English portion puts less emphasis on vocabulary words and more on reading. It used to be possible to vastly improve one's SAT score by cramming vocabulary words, but this isn't true anymore, and reading ability is much more important.

The SAT essays are typical high school type essays. The College Board has its own people to grade them.