The first Digital SAT in the US has come and gone, and student feedback was… rough. Tutors and students from across the country reported the same thing: for Math in particular, the second module had unfamiliar problem types and was harder than anything students had seen on the official practice tests from BlueBook. Nearly everyone ran out of time. Probably not the PR the College Board was seeking. At least there were not widespread technical difficulties!
Scores will tell the tale when they are released on March 22nd. But a few considerations are helpful here for context beforehand.
First, the SAT is scaled for difficulty. Broadly speaking, students are being scored and ranked against other test-takers. As a result, the same number of questions wrong can yield very different scores, particularly at the high end of the score scale. On the previous version of the SAT, five incorrect Math questions could give a score of anywhere from 710 to 780. On a test that is so obviously hard for every student like this last test was, the scale is very likely to be more forgiving. It’s possible that while students did miss mor questions than usual, they may end up with better scores than they anticipate. Let’s hope so!
Second, these “hard” tests are not unique to the Digital SAT. Very hard tests have popped up intermittently throughout my career – October 2017 comes to mind. However, I cannot recall ever seeing two such tests in a row. So even if scores are not as good as hoped on this last SAT, that’s no reason to believe the Digital Test will always be this difficult.
Finally, while I understand that seeing new question types can be unsettling for students, there is ultimately nothing unfair about it. Students have reported to me in detail what the new question types were like, and these questions were on topics that are well-known to be on the test. Particularly when a new version of the test comes out, it’s impossible to predict exactly how questions will be written – this same issue arose in 2016 when the last version of the SAT began. It’s cliched advice, but students must retain the ability the expect the unexpected, remembering that while the presentation of a topic may be new, the topics themselves are well-known and remain the same.
All in all, students may be wondering whether it’s time to jump ship and switch to the more familiar ACT. I think it is too soon to reach this conclusion. SAT scores may turn out better than expected; if they don’t, the scores on the next test will likely be much more in line with what is expected; and although the ACT is more familiar, there are easy and hard versions of the ACT, too – this past October’s ACT was pretty brutal, for example, with almost no one performing as expected. But then this February’s ACT, just a few months later, yielded terrific results. Let’s hope the May SAT follows a similar pattern.
We’re eagerly awaiting scores this Friday the 22nd! Please reach out with questions about your results or how to proceed with preparation.
