SAT goes digital in effort to retain importance

by Ronnie Walker

On Jan. 25, the College Board announced that the SAT will become fully digital by Spring 2024. Besides the removal of the pencil and paper, the new exam brings many major changes to pacing, calculator use and a monumental change in scoring. In an era where the SAT’s importance is being questioned more than ever, it’s unclear whether the changes will reestablish the test’s relevancy.

Photo of a test being filled out taken from istockphoto.com

The COVID-19 pandemic started a tectonic shift in the world of education, especially in regards to online learning. Digitized testing is becoming ever more popular, as physical test sites could be disrupted by an outbreak overnight. 

Many American students have already experienced digital standardized testing in the form of the digital ACT, which has gone rather smoothly. Comparatively, the College Board’s history of digitalized testing is less than ideal. The digital 2020 AP Exams were poorly optimized, glitchy and impressively unreflective of students’ mastery of the course material. In addition, the cost per exam for 2020 was the exact same as other years, despite being under half the length. It was not a resounding success.

The new digital SAT will be two hours long, compared to the current three hours. While a perfect score remains 1600, the test will no longer be scored entirely on correct answers. This new test is adaptable, meaning questions in future sections can change in response to students’ performance. Questions will also be weighted in terms of difficulty. 

The new exam allows the use of a built-in graphing calculator throughout the entire math section, eliminating the ‘no calculator’ section. Reading passages are also shorter, and questions in this section will be more direct and easier to interpret than those of the current test.

The changes are large and controversial. These efforts will make the exam less stressful, but also likely lower the difficulty. Some praise the College Board for adapting to the times and making the exam more accessible, while others denounce the changes as a desperate ploy to keep the exam relevant. 

The global pandemic has shifted many universities to implement test-optional admission, with some even ditching them when considering scholarships. Colleges have recognized some students will be unable to take the test due to the frequent closure of test centers. The duality of this factor with the persistent criticism that a standardized test cannot truly be predictive of a student’s intelligence has made the test less relevant than ever before. 

Will the College Board’s response save the SAT? The closure of test sites will remain an issue as the test will still be taken at these sites. The most major change, then, is the possibility of a lowered difficulty, which some colleges and universities could respond to with less consideration of a student’s score. This reason will likely hold digitalization of the exam from restoring the test to its former glory.

The Class of 2025 will be the first in the US to truly experience this change. Until then, we all must wait and see.