BOSTON, Oct. 31— Substantial revisions of the college admissions tests taken each year by more than one million pencil-chewing students were approved today. The changes will put more emphasis on reading skills, move the exams away from multiple-choice answers and, for the first time, permit calculators to be used.
But the College Board, a nonprofit organization that sponsors the tests, stopped short of more sweeping changes, like mandatory essay questions, that had been under consideration in the exams. The tests, the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the Achievement Tests, have been known to generations of students as "the S.A.T.'s."
Today's eighth graders will be the first class to take the new tests when they become high school juniors in the spring of 1994. Changing the Emphasis?
Educators who have worked for more than three years on the revisions say they will reduce the effectiveness of outside coaching companies and will emphasize to high school educators around the country that test-taking is not as important as reading and writing.
For months, word has been leaking out of a fundamental restructuring that would bring the S.A.T.'s out from under accusations that they are inaccurate and obsolescent. Donald M. Stewart, president of the College Board, and Gregory Anrig, president of the Educational Testing Service, which designs and administers the tests, have talked freely for years about how important it was to substantially revise them.
In the past three years, sample tests, including the written essay and math computations, were adminstered to 100,000 students, and the proposed changes were reviewed by more than 6,000 experts. The studies cost millions, and many observers believed the board was fully committed to the proposals, including mandatory essays. Criticism From Minorities
But in the end severe criticism, especially from minority groups who believed a mandatory essay would put them at a disadvantage, helped to kill the proposal, as did the cost of administering and scoring the essays.
Some of those gathered at the meeting today were surprised at the comparatively modest scope of change, which they said must have been a disappointment to Mr. Stewart and the board.
"If he's not embarrassed, he should be," said Robert Schaeffer, an educational consultant who opposes standardized tests.
But Mr. Stewart showed no sign of being let down by today's vote. He and other officials said the changes will improve the test and help raise standards in high schools across the country.
"Taken as a whole, these changes are designed to send positive signals to our schools, to reinforce sound curriculum in the high schools," said Derek Bok, the president of Harvard and co-chairman of a panel that reviewed the proposed changes. Mr. Bok said the revisions would make them "a more versatile set of tests serving a more diverse group of people." Some See Cosmetic Changes
But those who have long asserted that the tests inaccurately assessed student ability and were heavily biased against women and minority groups immediately attacked the changes as being little more than cosmetic.
"The test is not going to be improved in terms of predictability for college performance because it has basically not changed," said Cinthia Schuman, executive director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a nonprofit group in Cambridge, Mass., that has often led the opposition to the tests. Nor, she said, will the changes correct the bias against women and minorities.
The tests are used, along with other factors, to evaluate applications to college and to grant scholarships. But they have become far more than just an educational touchstone. Although they were not designed to be used in such ways, scores often become reflections of a school's quality or a selling point, rattled off by real estate brokers, emphasizing the merits of a particular school district. Other Tests Affected
The changes will also affect two other tests administered by the College Board. They are the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, given to high school students as a sort of prelude to the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Both are similar to the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
College Board officials described the changes approved today as substantial, but they insisted they were not made in response to criticism. Rather, they said, the changes are intended to improve the tests' reliability and to more accurately reflect the increasing diversity of students and what is being taught today.
The decision today also adds Japanese and Chinese to the list of languages in which optional parts of the tests may be taken and changes the names from the Scholastic Aptitude Test and Achievement Tests to Scholastic Assessment Test I and Scholastic Assessment Test II, respectively. The aptitude test is meant to gauge verbal and mathematical ability. The achievement exams, which not all colleges require, deal with specific subjects.
The most significant change is in the aptitude test's mathematics section, where problems have been added in which students, using calculators if they wish, figure out the answer instead of having a a list of options from which to chose.
The number of these problems will remain small -- no more than 15 out of about 60 items -- but it underscores a greater emphasis toward problem solving and individual thinking. More Time to Think
