The SAT is Going Digital! What does that mean?
when’s this change happening?
This is the first and perhaps most important thing that most of us are asking: when is the change happening? Well, what if I were to tell you that changes were already in effect?
The transition to the Digital SAT started with a transition for international students. They have already started taking Digital SATs as of Spring 2023.
From there, the transition continues with the PSAT, which will go digital as of its administration in Fall 2023. So, students taking the PSAT in the Fall will be taking it digitally.
The SAT will be fully digital by Spring 2024. So, for all current sophomores, they need to ask themselves if they want to expedite their SAT preparation to be done by December 2023 OR do they want to commit to prepping for the Digital exam?
is the actual test changing?
Long story short, yes! The test itself is changing and in some sections, it’s changing pretty dramatically.
The biggest changes are happening to the length of the test overall and to the reading and writing sections.
Currently, the test is 3 hours and 15 minutes. After the change to digital, the exam will be 2 hours and 14 minutes, so shortening the exam by about 1 hour.
The math section really isn’t changing too much in terms of what content is covered. It will still cover the same types of content; however, there will no longer be a no-calculator section. Yup! You can use your calculator the entire time and there are about 14 fewer questions than there were previously.
On the grid-ins (the free response questions at the end), you can now grid-in 5 digits (6 if you count the negative sign). This is also a change as grid-in questions on the paper exam could not be negative numbers as there was no way for students to grid that in.
If you ask me, though, the biggest changes are happening in the verbal section. What used to be separate reading and writing sections have now been merged into one Reading & Writing section. The section is shorter and you answer slightly more question in the same amount of time as the previous reading section. The biggest change? No more long passages! Students everywhere are probably rejoicing over that and I have some current SAT students that are a little jealous. Passages will now be ~100 words, essentially eliminating the long-form reading comprehension of old.
Other changes on the reading/writing section:
“Great Global Conversation” as a reading passage type has been removed. I can literally hear every student celebrating. These were often the hardest reading passages.
Writing questions will no longer test commonly confused words or idiomatic phrases.
The “No Change” option in writing questions is removed. This might be great for some students and less so for others.
Finally, there is still no science section. However, scientific-esque analysis will still be a part of the reading, writing, and math sections in the form of graph interpretation, so that really hasn’t changed.
what does it mean that the test is now adaptive?
The “adaptive” aspect of the test means that students won’t all be taking the exact same test. Each section is broken into 2 stages—Reading & Writing contains two stages of 27 questions and Math contains two stages of 22 questions. The two stages are taken back to back, with a break between Reading & Writing stage 2 and Math Stage 1. The staging is where the adaptive nature of the exam comes in.
The test does not adapt question by question, where every question varies based on your performance. Rather, it’s stage-adaptive (like the GRE). Stage 1 has a full range of difficulty in terms of the questions a student will see. Once the first stage is completed for Reading & Writing and Math, at this point the test will “adapt”. What this means is if a student does very well, they’re taken to a harder second stage, and, if they do less well, they’re taken to a slightly easier stage for stage 2.
This stage-adaptive nature of the exam has some big impacts:
Students will receive scores back in a matter of hours to days (as opposed to weeks).
Students are not able to see the questions they missed. SAT is discontinuing the QAS service (since all tests are different—and likely because they want to preserve their question bank).
If you sort into the “easier” second stage, their is a cap, in essence, for how highly you can score.
There is no more 5th section of the exam. Instead, SAT is including 2 questions per stage that are unscored to help them test new questions.
Scores are no longer determined by a simple right or wrong answer and there is no published scoring scale since each test is different. Additionally, it’s just a more complicated model that involves a lot of statistics to determine a student’s score.
what about how you take the sat? how will the test experience change?
You might think that you will be going to a computer lab or test center equipped with shared computers. That actually isn’t the case. On test days, students will be asked to provide their own laptop or tablet to take the test on. The idea is that students won’t have to learn how to use a different computer on test day and that they’ll be able to use a computer that they’re more adapted to using. If a student does not have a device they can use, they will be granted one by either College Board or their testing center. They can also incorporate external devices like a mouse, keyboard, stylus, etc. for personal comfort.
Note: I find this interesting and I personally think it introduces an element of unfairness into the testing process. What is one student has a stylus (allowing for easier annotation) and another student doesn’t?
The test will be administered in a locked-down app; students will not be able to open other applications while testing.
Students will be expected to arrive with fully charged devices and the testing app pre-installed. Test centers *may* provide power to standard-timed examinees and *must* provide it to those with extended time.
Scratch paper will be provided because, for example, the app will not allow for marking-up of math diagrams. Either a pencil or pen can be used for notes.
Students will have their own timer in the app, so the problem of mistiming by proctors or the lack of notifications should be eliminated. The timer can be hidden up until the final 5 minutes of each stage.
Students can move back and forth among questions, but only within the currently active stage.
The app includes built-in features like a highlighter, answer eliminator, and question flag to help students track their progress through questions and identify questions that need further review. The highlighter is not available on the Math section. I highly recommend checking out College Board’s Bluebook practice testing app to see a little more clearly what the testing experience will look like.
what about national test dates?
That will likely go unchanged for now, with SAT retaining their standard National test days structure. More details on this will likely be released moving forward. I anticipate that College Board will eventually move to something like the GRE does where students can start at staggered times and take the exam whenever you want, but that hasn’t officially been announced as of yet, so don’t take my word on that.
School-day testing will likely have even more flexibility than it current does. There might be larger windows when School-day testing can be administered. They may be able to stagger start times throughout the day or across the week so entire classes aren’t taking the test all at once, though this will likely have limitations.
who is affected most?
The class of 2024 will likely be mostly done with their testing by the time the digital SAT fully rolls out, but there might be some stragglers that are still working through their testing.
The switch to digital testing really affects the Class of 2025 and beyond.
what about accommodations?
This is perhaps the aspect of the switch to digital that I’m least certain. Existing accommodations will be maintained (they have to—legally), but the majority will still be provided in the digital, adaptive format.
The other aspect of this would that students with extended time will not be allowed to end a section early to advance. They would have to fully use their extended time (or twiddle their thumbs while waiting for the exam to end).
For accommodations that cannot be provided digitally (e.g., Braille), students will take a longer, 3-hour, non-digital and non-adaptive exam.
Now, let’s talk resources…
what resources are available to start practicing this?
College Board’s Bluebook practice testing app—which is likely going to be very similar to the app that students will be using to take exam—is already available. There are 4 practice SATs, with PSATs and additional SATs likely being added overtime. This is a little bit of a downer as that is not a ton of practice material to pull from, but, fortunately, other testing and study materials are already being prepped by other sources. For example,
Khan Academy has released an initial set of practice materials (with more likely to come soon)
How will this impact the ACT? is it changing too?
This is a great question. No, it is not. The ACT seems to be establishing itself as the steady, reliable testing option, as this is the 3rd major change the SAT has made in less than a decade. Heck, when I took it, it was out of 2400!
The ACT did, at one point, announce the future possibility of single-section testing. That’s off the table for now.
They’re considering digital testing at some point, but there are logistical hurdles they’re working on. So, paper exams are remaining a thing.
Also, ACT is aware of a test site shortage—especially in California, which frankly was also a problem for the SAT during COVID—and there is no clear solution.
UPDATE: As of June 2023, the ACT has also announced a plan to offer computer-based testing (CBT) in 2024. See the post on the digital changes to the ACT (coming soon!)
