SAT essay: Go for length.

MIT's Dr. Les Perelman crunched the numbers on the new SAT essays and:

He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade." NY Times 5/4/05

Just amazing. "What a waste of money", parents are thinking. But their children have known all along how to flesh out an essay. Who knew the answer was in the funny papers.

[Thanks to Tracy and SS for the cartoon link update.]