The College Board has been fending off accusations of bias in their test for decades now. In 2005, they revamped the SAT to include an essay writing section, removed analogies, and increased the score from 1600 to 2400 (800 possible points for Writing, Reading, and Math). In 2016, they released an updated test yet again. That update is the test we have today: 1600 points, 800 combined Reading and Writing, 800 Math. It did away with traditional vocabulary synonym questions in favor of vocabulary in context and introduced citing evidence questions; it also added charts and tables to Reading and Writing so that students would have to synthesize and interpret data in a way that would mimic real world applications. The 2016 update also added a no-calculator section to the Math test.
None of that quelled the fundamental accusations that the test faced: that high scores correlated as much with socioeconomic status as they did with academic aptitude. Now, the SAT is going digital, seeking to shorten the test time while still maintaining the same academic predictive ability that colleges demand of a standardized test used for college admissions and course placement.
Whenever the format changes, there’s profound anxiety among students, families, and schools about what will change and how that will affect student performance. So let’s go over the digital SAT, how it will work, when it will come out, and whether or not your student should rush now to take the paper test before the first digital administrations happen in March 2024.
Should you be worried about the digital SAT?
Not really. The new test format will likely cause a temporary dip in scores as test takers adjust and more practice resources are published; the same thing happened in 2016–2018. [1] But at the same time, I wouldn’t rush out to take the first few digital tests in March or May.
Whenever a new test comes out, there are always going to be logistical hurdles to overcome. That’ll be doubly true for the first digital test: the software—BlueBook—is a few years old thanks to COVID, but it has had few tests at this scale. Not to mention the problems with internet connectivity, devices, charging access, and other potential struggles that proctors won’t be 100% prepared to address.
Not to mention, when the 2016 revamped test came out, it looked a little different from the paper SAT we have today. Certain question types were dropped or altered, and the wording of questions was tightened as College Board got more testing data and honed in on their ideal format. The same will likely happen with the digital test. They already rolled it out overseas March 2023, but that does not guarantee that the US test will be finely tuned right out of the gate. It’ll be best to wait for at least three test administrations to pass before taking the test—September or October 2024 will be a good time to start taking the digital test.
What does the digital SAT look like?
The digital SAT is broken up into 4 parts: 2 Math modules, and 2 Reading/Writing modules. There is a timer for each section built into BlueBook, as well as a few test-taking features: the ability to flag questions for review later (if you skip one, for instance), annotations for reading passages and word problems, and the ability to cross out answer choices. The digital SAT still includes the reference sheet with formulae and they have added a powerful graphing calculator called Desmos. The test also downloads at the start of the test administration and can run without constant internet connectivity, in case the wifi goes out. But to submit the test, students will need to reconnect to the internet.
The first modules for both Math and Reading/Writing are the benchmark modules. Most of the questions will be the same for each student. Numbers might change slightly from student-to-student for the Math questions, or the passages might be in a different order in the Reading/Writing section (though it should be noted that Reading questions are always the first half of the section, and Writing is always the second half). Answer choices can also be mixed up from test-taker to test-taker, so that the right answer might be A for one student and C for another.
The second modules for Math and Reading/Writing will be different depending on the student, however. Bluebook will score the first modules for both sections and assign one of two weighted modules after. There will be an “easier” version and a “harder” version for both Math and Reading/Writing, depending on how the student performs in the first module. How the student performs on the first module will determine the maximum possible score they can achieve on the test. If they perform poorly enough on the first Math module, for instance, they may get the easier second module, which might mean their maximum possible score is ~650-680. If they perform well on the first module, and they get the harder second module, their maximum possible score would still be 800. The same logic applies to the Reading/Writing modules. In this way, the College Board hopes to hone in on a student’s ability level using fewer, more targeted questions, enabling them to reduce the testing time by 33%. The resulting score is meant to be comparable with the current paper SAT scores, with a maximum 800 for Reading/Writing and 800 for Math (a 1600 maximum score).
Should you rush to take the paper SAT now?
As we mentioned in our overall discussion of the SAT and ACT, there are some generally-agreed upon principles for when students should take the SAT or ACT. The SAT has a healthy number of problems that will expect students to have completed Algebra II. The ACT has fewer Algebra II questions but more Geometry and some Trigonometry questions. So a good rule of thumb is to base test prep on when the student takes Algebra II.
For students on a typical math track that ends with Pre-Calculus senior year, junior year becomes the time to start preparing for the test (when they take Algebra II). Students will start prepping the summer before junior year starts, and the earliest they should take the SAT would be December, with half of Algebra II under their belts. They can also take the March test with additional preparation and see how their scores improve. They’ll likely need to pause test prep due to AP testing, and they can resume testing in June or August if they still want to increase their scores.
For students on an accelerated math track, they can start earlier. If they complete Algebra II sophomore year, then they should start test prep late sophomore year, or in the summer between sophomore and junior year. They can take the SAT starting in August of junior year. They’ll have the August, October, November, December, and March tests. After that, they’ll focus on AP testing.
That means that rising sophomores this year should probably just wait for the digital test rather than rush to take the test now. They won’t complete Algebra II before the digital test comes out, and the first few tests will pass before they begin preparing over the summer after sophomore year, so rising sophomores will be in a prime position to take the digital SAT after the first few tests have passed and the kinks have been worked out. There’s no sense in having your student rush to take the test now only to risk having to change testing formats if they don’t achieve the scores they want.
If your student is a rising junior, they should be preparing to take the test right now, and they should take the August, October, November, or December SATs. I tend not to suggest students take the test more than three times, so students should try to space out their official tests so that they have time to prepare between each attempt.
Summary
If your student is a rising sophomore, they will be fine with the digital SAT. They can prepare for the SAT as normal over the summer and begin taking the digital test in the fall. I recommend not jumping in on the first few tests in 2024. If the March 2024 test is the first digital SAT, I would skip the March, May, and June tests. Begin taking the digital SAT in either August, or even October. Taking the October, December, and March 2025 digital tests their junior year will provide your student enough time to prepare with new practice materials for the digital test, and still give the College Board time to fine tune the digital test and the testing logistics before your student has to sign up for it.
Rising juniors should be preparing to take the paper test this fall to avoid the digital test at all costs. If they take the August test, they can still take the October and December SAT and have a month between each to do additional studying. After December, if they are not happy with their score, they will likely have to take the digital SAT. And they’ll be taking it during those first few test administrations when the test is still in flux and the proctoring logistics are still being worked out.
That’s a situation ripe for stressing out your student, and you.
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Citations
[1] SAT test averages stay relatively stable over time, but that’s likely due to the large number of test takers who do no preparation at all, or the number of test takers whose schools provide official administrations during the school day. When the format changed, 84,806 students scored in the highest score band according to the 2017 report (https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2017-total-group-sat-suite-assessments-annual-report.pdf). That number doubled to 145,023 the year after as test takers became more familiar with the new format, and it increased proportionately to 156,000 the year after that (https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2018-total-group-sat-suite-assessments-annual-report.pdf, https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2019-total-group-sat-suite-assessments-annual-report.pdf).