Digital SAT Update: You Can Super Score with the Paper SAT!
One of the biggest question marks with the switch of the SAT from paper to Digital this year was the impact that this would have on superscoring. Well, that question has now been answered: you can superscore your paper SAT with the Digital SAT.
But, there is a catch…
Superscoring is and has always been school-specific. What does this mean? It means that it’s not up to the College Board to super score your SAT. It’s up to the colleges you’re applying to whether or not super scoring is allowed.
Thus far, no college I’ve heard of that allows super scoring doesn’t allow for a student to super score their Digital SAT with their paper SAT. So, if you’re allowed to superscore, you’re allowed to do so with the Digital SAT.
This was a big question mark for a while with the Digital SAT, so I’m glad it’s being clarified.
What is super scoring?
A super score refers to taking your highest section scores and combining them together to produce your highest score yet.
For example, let’s say you got a 1470 on the August 2023 SAT. You’re super happy with your 770 on the Math section, but not very pleased with the 700 you got on the Reading/Writing section. Now, let’s say you take the March 2024 Digital SAT and you get a 750 on the Reading/Writing section. You can now take that 750 and combine it together with your 770 on math, giving you a 1520 super score!
Cool, huh?
Is it worth it to take the Digital SAT just to up my score?
This really depends on the student and the situation. But, here are my quick thoughts on the situation.
The Digital SAT is very different and frankly a LOT easier than the paper exam. A student that previously struggled with the long reading passages on the paper SAT would likely kind the verbal section significantly easier, what with the fact that there are no longer long reading passages that test your reading comprehension. The reading passages are much shorter and focus on understanding and interpretation. So, for a student who struggled on reading, they’ll benefit a lot. That being said, there are some tricky new questions on the Digital SAT, so there is some important give and take.
The Digital SAT Math also has some changes in that students now get a calculator the whole time and they have the ability to use a graphing utility that is very similar to Desmos. Though I don’t believe that simple having a calculator will suddenly make every student a high scorer, the addition of the graphing utility is a bit of a game changer for students and allows them to simply graph a question that they otherwise might need to use long, tedious, mistake-inducing algebra to solve.
So, there definitely are some tremendous benefits to students who take the Digital SAT. If you’re a Junior (or younger) and you’re not quite happy with your paper SAT score, it would be to your benefit to try your luck at the Digital SAT.
Most of my students like it WAY better!
