A 2400 may be the new perfect SAT score, but high school students applying to Georgetown still only need to worry about 1600 of them.

Charles Deacon, dean of undergraduate admissions, said the new, 800-point writing section of the new SAT I is unnecessary and flawed. Therefore, admissions officers will ignore scores received on the writing section when evaluating Class of 2010 applicants this fall.

The new SAT, administered for the first time this month, has three sections: math, critical reading and writing. It lasts three hours and 45 minutes and costs $49 – 45 minutes longer and $15 more than the old SAT. The new math section covers higher-level concepts than the old math section such as Algebra II. Critical reading is similar to the old verbal section, but the College Board has added short passages and eliminated analogies. The writing section includes a handwritten essay and multiple-choice questions dealing with language and editing concepts.

There are 800 possible points for each section. The essay, a viewpoint piece responding to a specific prompt, also receives an independent score from 2-12. College admissions officers can read scanned copies of each applicant’s essay online.

The College Board said that the writing portion lets colleges see how students write under pressure. A student’s essay score is predictive of how he or she may fare in a university test setting, it said.

Deacon, however, said the SAT II: Writing exam was a more complex and valuable tool for assessing timed writing ability. Now that the SAT has its own, shorter writing section, the College Board has phased out its SAT II: Writing exam.

The College Board also said that the essay allows admissions committees to compare a student’s polished essays with an off-the-cuff response, to make sure students’ applications are an honest representation of their abilities. Some students have access to counselors who edit their application materials extensively. The SAT essay is a way of putting all students on the same level, according to the College Board.

“It’s still highly coachable,” Deacon said of the SAT I, adding that the same people who pay counselors to sculpt and revise their applications will pay for Princeton Review or Kaplan prep courses geared toward the new SAT.

“The rich get richer, if you will,” he said. He also disagreed with the idea of checking a student’s application essays against a timed essay. “It’s ridiculous to play detective,” he said.

Georgetown has a philosophical problem with the idea of another SAT section as well, according to Deacon. Students from underprivileged backgrounds have often attended poorly-funded and understaffed schools, and these students tend to score lower on the SAT than students at better schools, Deacon said.

Deacon argued that a student’s score is often directly correlated to how well he or she has learned test-taking strategies. He said that expanding the SAT to three sections just gives wealthy students another good score and poor students another low one.

“The more low scores you have, the more you rule yourself out,” Deacon said. He added that Georgetown does not consider SAT scores to be a make-or-break factor in admitting or rejecting students.

Patricia O’Connor, professor of English, said that the writing section may stigmatize some students. “I’d hate to see it as another way of eliminating working-class students,” she said. She also doubted the value of such a short essay response. “How many sentences can you actually craft in 25 minutes?”

Deacon said that since the math section covers more difficult material than it used to, it also disadvantages the underprivileged. Students at schools without AP programs often don’t take the SAT-tested math until 12th grade, Deacon said.

Last year, Deacon participated in a focus group organized by the College Board. He gave them feedback on what he felt to be a good model for the new SAT: more writing-oriented multiple-choice questions embedded into the old verbal section. He never thought an additional section was practical or useful, and did not see the value of having students write an essay.

Deacon said that Georgetown is one of the few top colleges that have publicly balked at the new writing section, along with the University of Chicago. “We’re not saying that we’re gong to turn our back on the SAT,” Deacon said, although he said he thinks that the exam is too long. “Students aren’t responding well to it,” he said.

If high school students call the admissions office asking whether they should take the ACT or the SAT, Deacon said Georgetown will tell them the essay is irrelevant no matter which exam they take. While the SAT essay is required, the ACT essay is optional. Students can decide for themselves which exam they prefer.

The one upshot to SAT’s new writing section may be that high schools start focusing on teaching writing better, O’Connor said. “I’m pleased that the SAT is acknowledging that emphasis on writing is important.”