Just What You Kids Love Most

It's a high school junior's worst nightmare.

Thanks to a printer's goof, several hundred students who took the Scholastic Aptitude Test last Saturday will have to go through the three-hour ordeal all over again.

Eight thousand of the SAT booklets distributed on Saturday had two pages blank. While the pages were part of an experimental section that had no bearing on the scores, many students were instructed to leave by their proctors after completing two hours' worth of the test.

"Both the printer and ETS have quality control standards," said a spokesman for Educational Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, N.J., which administers the SAT. "Somehow the error got through both. We're going to have to reevaluate the way we quality-check the tests. This never happened before--but once is all it takes," the spokesman said.

ETS plans to telephone all affected students and present them with three options: they can have their tests scored and reported normally if they wish; take a retest on May 17--a specially scheduled date--or June 7 or 8, the next regularly scheduled date; or get a full test fee refund.

Bummer

Leslie Stein, a high school junior in suburban Needham, received one of the faulty exams and was told by her proctor to leave. "I was shocked," Stein said. "I had been taking [SAT preparation] courses. I thought I was doing great. I was very confident it was just unreal."

Joy Mclntyre, an ETS spokesman, said that proctors should have instructed students to finish the test. However, Stein said that five students at her school had been instructed to leave by different proctors.

Stein said she will take the retest-- but is far from happy about it. "It's reallyunfair that there's so much emphasis on a testthat makes mistakes like this. It messes up ourspring. Now we have to study for Achievements andSATs at the same time."

And worst of all, Mary Ellen Fischer, an SATadvisor for Stanley Kaplan Educational Services inNewton, predicted that most students won't improvetheir scores on the retest. She likened the retestto an extension on a paper: "When you get anextension, do you go right home and start writing,or do you let it wait for two weeks and then cramthe night before?