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Fill out the form below to download our FAQ Sheet and receive up-to-date info on the upcoming Digital SAT as more details become available.
The SAT is Changing…Again!
In January 2022, College Board announced that the SAT was going “digital” in the next few years. Find out what that means, what is changing and what is staying the same, when this is happening, and what these changes may mean for you.
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Although the name of the test makes it sound like students will be able to take it at home, the Digital SAT can only be taken in official testing centers. Students can bring their own laptops or tablets to the test center and will be given information on how to download the testing app before they arrive.
When are these changes happening?
College Board is planning to make a hard cutover from paper-and-pencil tests to the Digital SAT with international (non-U.S.) students starting with the March 2023 test administration. In the fall of 2023 the Digital PSAT will be given, and finally, the Digital SAT will be the only option for U.S. students starting with the March 2024 test administration.
What additional changes will we see on the Digital SAT?
The test will be shorter. There will be fewer questions and a shorter timeframe in which to answer them, taking the test from around 3 hours down to about 2 hours.
It will become an adaptive test. This means that for each of the two sections (Reading and Writing, Math), there will be two modules. The difficulty level of the second section (easier or harder) in each subject is determined by your performance on the first section. If you get lots of questions right on the first section, you will get a harder second section, but access to higher scores. If you don’t get as many questions right on the first section, you will get an easier second section and your scoring potential is capped at a lower range.
Reading and Writing and Language will be combined into one Reading and Writing section. concepts will now be tested with one short passage per question instead of having several questions attached to only a handful of long passages. This will allow the test to feature a wider range of genres and levels of text difficulty and will allow students to get to the information they need in a passage more quickly. The College Board has also hinted at new verbal question types but won’t release specifics until this summer.
The Digital SAT will not have a “no calculator” section, and the testing app will feature a built-in Desmos graphing calculator. Students can still bring in their own approved calculators, though, if they choose to. The College Board has also indicated that math questions will be less wordy, but there is no concrete information about what that means just yet.
Take a Closer Look at the Digital SAT!
See how the new digital test will look and feel on test day with our FREE Digital SAT model.
College Board says that the Digital SAT will still be used in the same way and scored on the same scale as the current paper-and-pencil test. They have indicated that they are working with colleges and universities to educate them on the changes and assure them that the test will be reliable and valid. Even with the major changes to format and the suggestions of new question types, the concepts tested on the Digital SAT seem like they will be the same ones currently tested for the most part.
What do these changes mean for students?
Your response to the news of the Digital SAT and PSAT will largely depend on your graduation year and your personal preferences. If you are an international student, you will not have much time to prepare for the Digital SAT before the cutover, with only about 6 months between the release of practice tests and the first test administration. As such, you may want to make sure to conclude your SAT testing before the cutover or even explore taking the ACT as an alternative.
Students in the United States will have much more time to get ready for the Digital PSAT and SAT, and students in the graduating class of 2025 will have the Digital PSAT as their only option.
Many students in pilot programs for the Digital SAT have found the test to be easier to take and less stressful overall, though no information has been released yet in terms of how those students have scored. Once practice tests have been released, students can take them to decide if they want to take the paper-and-pencil SAT while they still can, or wait for the Digital SAT, or avoid the decision entirely by focusing on the ACT instead.
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