While most high school students depend on Number 2 pencils and study books to get through the SAT, a group of New York City students will get to use Legos as they face tests for college admissions.

Deborah Bial, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard's Graduate School of Education (GSE), has designed a new college aptitude test centered around communication skills and small group activities--testing that includes building robots with Legos.

Nine prominent U.S. colleges have agreed to factor scores from the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Index test into their admissions decisions, and by December, some 700 New York City public school students will have taken the test's inaugural version.

Bial's index is not meant to replace the SAT or any other current standard, Bial said, but is instead a "tool that can be used to help college admissions officers broaden the way they assess and admit applicants."

Bial described the test as a series of interactive workshops. One hundred students undergo testing at the same time, in groups of 10 or 12. Each group takes a different test, aimed at measuring skills students need in their college careers: communication, leadership, strategic thinking and organizational skills.

The students are tested in different groups for a total of three hours, and trained evaluators score each student individually.

In one section, students must use a set of Lego building blocks to construct a duplicate of a robot sitting in another room. Only one student is allowed to view the robot at a time and must orally report his or her findings to the rest of the group.

The goal isn't necessarily to finish building the robot, Bial said, but rather to demonstrate initiative and an ability to solve complicated problems.