Aspose.OMR  Make OMR Exam SAT Form

OMR SAT Sheet

Creating and reading machine-readable SAT sheets

Machine-readable SAT form

The Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) is a standardized test that is widely used for college admissions in the United States. The main purpose of the test is to assess the student's readiness for further education by assessing written, oral and mathematical skills. Most colleges in the United States require the SAT for admission to undergraduate courses. Schools also offer scholarships to students based on their SAT scores. The College Board has also introduced the SAT in India. All the universities in the India Higher Education Alliance are accepting SAT scores for admission from Indian students and around the world. The SAT is offered seven times a year in the United States: in August, October, November, December, March, May, and June. For international students, the SAT is offered four times a year: in October, December, March and May.

SAT test is typically taken by high school juniors and seniors. Currently, it is a paper-based test , when participants are filling in the bubbles corresponding to the correct answers with a pencil. The SAT form includes 154 multiple-choice questions, making manual scoring of each completed answer sheet a long process with potential human errors. Automatic scoring is usually done with specialized scoring devices that are not affordable for individual tutors and small / medium training courses. Fortunately, these costs can be affiliated with Aspose.OMR solution.

Aspose.OMR is a powerful API that can convert a regular computer into an optical reader / scoring machine for creating and grading any multiple-choice paper test. It allows for automatically processing dozens of manually filled forms in seconds without specialized hardware – simply take a photo of a completed OMR form in class and get a result that can be automatically graded or imported into a database. The Aspose.OMR API is extremely simple, versatile, and cost effective—you only need minimal programming skills and a free IDE like Visual Studio Community Edition to use it.

To free up valuable time that could be better spent educating your applicants, we provide you with highly customizable SAT answer sheets. The sample form below shows how to use Aspose.OMR to design and create a SAT form for the exam in schools, institutes, and coaching centers.

To customize the SAT form, change the sources above and generate the printout for your preferred paper type. You can change the number and order of questions and create subject-specific forms that are perfectly tailored to your educational process.

To add it to your project, you just need to install the Aspose.OMR NuGet package in your project with the following command:


  PM> Install-Package Aspose.OMR
 

Instructions

Follow the guidelines below on using and customizing machine-readable SAT answer sheet.

Filling out SAT answer sheet

SAT follows the strict pattern. Thus, we recommend that candidates follow precise instructions during the training tests to familiarize themselves with the real exam expectations:

  • The total time for the SAT is 180 minutes, not including breaks.
  • Only one bubble should be filled per question.
  • The bubble’s circle must be completely filled with a No. 2 pencil.
  • Avoid any stray marks, especially those that cross the bubbles or a barcode.
  • It is allowed to erase the mark to change the response. Do it as completely as possible – incomplete marks or erasures may affect your score.
  • To fill in the test ID and the student’s number, fill in one bubble per column corresponding to a number.

Customizing SAT answer sheet

While the SAT has a fixed number of answers, for training and practice purposes, each form can be adjusted. It will ensure that students not only remember the “correct” answers, but catch the background topics in the long run. With Aspose.OMR, you can easily modify the form to focus on certain areas of the test.

The customize the SAT from:

  • Open the SAT form’s source code (SAT.txt) with any plain text editor.
  • Change the source code according to the [guidelines.](https://docs.aspose.com/omr/net/design-form/)
  • Customize the paper size, bubble color, font, and other [global page settings.](https://docs.aspose.com/omr/net/generate-template/page-setup/)

Once complete, run the following code to [generate](https://docs.aspose.com/omr/net/generate-template/) a printable template for the SAT form:

Build OMR SAT Sheet Form with Aspose OMR engine

    
    Aspose.OMR.Api.OmrEngine omrEngine = new Aspose.OMR.Api.OmrEngine();
    Aspose.OMR.Generation.GlobalPageSettings globalPageSettings = new Aspose.OMR.Generation.GlobalPageSettings() {
	    PaperSize = Aspose.OMR.Generation.PaperSize.Letter
    };
    Aspose.OMR.Generation.GenerationResult generationResult = omrEngine.GenerateTemplate("SAT.txt", globalPageSettings);
    generationResult.Save("target-folder", "template");
    

Now print the template.png file from the target folder and handle the papers to your students. You will also get the file with .OMR extension. Do not remove it – it will be required during recognition.

Recognizing the completed SAT sheet

To recognize a hand-filled SAT sheet, digitize it in one of the supported formats. There is no need for expensive hardware reader, such as Scantron. For best results, a basic office scanner or multifunction copier will suffice. If you do not have a scanner, you can simply photograph the form with any modern smartphone and upload the photo to your computer.

To read the student-completed SAT sheet, use the following code:

Recognize OMR SAT student-filled exam sheet with Aspose OMR library

    
    Aspose.OMR.Api.OmrEngine omrEngine = new Aspose.OMR.Api.OmrEngine();
    // Load the recognition pattern for SAT sheet template
    Aspose.OMR.Api.TemplateProcessor recognitionEngine = omrEngine.GetTemplateProcessor("template.omr");
    Aspose.OMR.Model.RecognitionResult recognitionResult = recognitionEngine.RecognizeImage("scanned-sheets/john-doe.png");
    string result = recognitionResult.GetCsv();
    

template.omr is so-called recognition pattern – a special file that is used to produce highly accurate results with the Aspose.OMR recognition engine. It is generated alongside the printable SAT form, make sure you do not delete or replace that file.

Benefits

  • Create machine-readable SAT answer sheet with a flexible and easy-to-use markup language.
  • Process dozens of completed SAT forms per minute.
  • Superior recognition accuracy that can be further fine-tuned for best results even in challenging conditions.
  • No equipment needed. Use your existing office copier instead of an expensive Scantron device. You can even process photos taken with a smartphone.
  • Personalize the forms with aspirant’s contact info, QR codes, barcodes and images.
  • Support for all popular paper sizes as well as a number of non-standard ones.
  • Read the completed SAT sheet as JSON, XML or CSV, which can be programmatically analyzed, scored and imported into any relational or NoSQL database.