AUSTIN, Texas — High school students can now leave their pencils at home for the SATs.
That’s because the standardized college admissions test is going fully digital.
“This is the largest SAT redesign in history,” David Blobaum, the Director of Outreach for the National Test Prep Association, said.
The change comes at the same time more colleges, including the University of Texas at Austin, are going back to requiring standardized testing again. Starting in spring 2020, a majority of universities moved to a test-optional admissions process because of limited testing options during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
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“What we found over time is that by not having the test as a tool, it looked as if we were putting more students in spots where they were not as well suited and set up as well to succeed,” UT President Jay Hartzell said.
High school students will still have to go in person for the proctored test, but it will be fully online through a lockdown browser. Students don’t even need to bring calculators, as everyone will have access to the Desmos Graphing Calculator digitally through the test.
What other changes are there?
Because the new digital SAT eliminates long reading passages with questions, it will be about 46 minutes shorter than the old one. But one of the most unique changes is the digital version's ability to adapt to the student’s performance in real time.
“You’ll take a verbal section and either get a harder section or an easier section depending on how you do,” Blobaum said.
Blobaum assured that it doesn’t mean some people will be getting an unfair advantage, just that those who score better on the first easy section won’t have to waste time working on a second easy section.
“If a student doesn't do as well and doesn't really get any of the hardest questions right, we're not going to waste their time making them feel bad and take more time doing more questions they won't get right,” Blobaum said. “It won’t take as much time and they won’t feel as defeated doing it.”
Some of the main feedback Blobaum has heard from students who took the first digital SAT in March is that they found this version to be more difficult.
“They made the questions harder but gave them more time for questions,” Blobaum said.
Do SAT scores even matter?
Blobaum said a student’s test scores shouldn’t be the end-all be-all. He students shouldn’t be judged solely on their test scores, but scores are helpful for college admissions to have a standardized common metric as a reference point.
According to Blobaum, 80% of current students going to a four-year B.A. granting university maintained A averages in high school. However, because of grade inflation, this is a complete shift of what happened 80 years ago.
Back in 1966, only about 20% of students going to a four-year university had A averages.
“When the vast majority of students have A averages, you can't really get a good gauge of one in a means at a given school,” Blobaum said.
Blobaum said college admissions also look at a student's score in comparison to what a school’s average is. Meaning if the average for a student’s high school is 800 and a student scores a 1400, that’s going to carry them very far. On the other hand, if a student scores a 1400 in a prep school whose average is 1450, it won’t have nearly the same effect.
Blobaum said this takes care of a lot of the equity issues people usually bring up when discussing the controversial topic of paying high prices for an SAT or ACT tutor.
So while schools were test-optional during the pandemic, Blobaum clarified that was largely in name-only for big schools that are more difficult to get into.
“Test scores were really necessary if you're applying to those selective and highly selective colleges,” Blobaum said.
And with this new digital version rolling out, Blobaum said nothing really changes for students wanting to go to attend prestigious colleges.
“Good test scores always helped kids get into better schools and get more scholarships,” Blobaum said.
The first digital SAT was administered in the U.S. earlier in March, but it had been tested for international students in March 2023. Students will all be required to take this digital version of the test unless they have special accommodations.
Blobaum said the ACT also rolled out its own digital version of the test, and students can pick whether to take it on paper or on the computer.