For juniors and seniors across America, the SAT is quite possibly one of the most important tests they will take as a first step into their college career. Colleges are looking for increasingly higher scores, and the pressure is on to receive the highest score possible.
There is one twist this year, though. Upperclassmen are encountering a switch from the traditional test to a new, redesigned version of the SAT.
The College Board, which is the organization that administers the test, revamped the SAT after years of maintaining the same format. The new format will be distributed on the next testing date.
The SAT that was administered in this area at New Bedford Voc Tech last Saturday, February 27, was the rescheduled test from the original January 23 date, which was cancelled due to inclement weather. That SAT was considered the “old” test; the “new” SAT is set to take place this Saturday, March 5.
The old SAT was comprised of ten sections, all based in reading/writing or math, including a mandatory essay question. The test’s essay question was written at the beginning of the exam, and it asked test-takers to pull from personal experiences, literature, observations, and studies to answer an opinion-based question in 25 minutes.
The total testing time was three hours and 45 minutes, with five-minute breaks scattered in between. For every correct answer, students were given one point. For every omitted answer, no points were gained or lost, and for every incorrect answer, one-quarter of a point was lost. The test was scored on a scale from 600 to 2400.
For the new SAT, there will be a total of 154 questions – much less than the old test’s 171. The essay question will be taken at the end of the testing period and is optional. There will be a 50-minute time period given, and the question will focus on analyzing a given “source text.”
The total testing time (including essay) is set to be three hours and 50 minutes. As for scoring, one point will be rewarded for every correct answer, and no points will be added or subtracted for both incorrect and omitted answers.
The test will be scored on a scale from 400 to 1600. The English section will no longer contain the infamously difficult vocabulary words that students work diligently to memorize before the test, as the College Board website explains:
“The words are ones that you will probably encounter in college or in the workplace long after test day. No longer will students use flashcards to memorize obscure words, only to forget them the minute they put their test pencils down. The redesigned exams will engage students in close reading and honor the best work of the classroom.”
The newly-designed SAT hopes to connect with the skills students will use after high school by selecting a wider range of math problems that broaden the focus to a more usable level of mathematics, as well as including important documents, such as “U.S. Founding Documents.”
This newly-designed exam will have the biggest impact on juniors, as most seniors have already applied to colleges and sent in their scores. Juniors hoping to take the test multiple times, even before senior year, which is recommended, are forced to adjust to a completely new form of the test – a form about which not much is known until it is taken this week.
Students in general are a little apprehensive about having to learn how to take a whole new test, especially one of this magnitude.
“It feels kind of rude, I’ve got to say, like, ‘why us?’ Why couldn’t it have been the next year?” said junior Celeste Hartley. “We didn’t really have a lot of warning that the test was changing, so it could affect our prospects; we could’ve had three chances on the old one and done well, but we have it switching halfway through our junior year…. It might hurt our college chances.”
On top of feeling slightly cheated, many students feel unprepared to walk into a test without having an idea about what the test will look like. Hartley said she feels completely unprepared.
“It’s a whole new setup and the PSAT isn’t like it and the MCAS was setup for the PSAT,” said Hartley. “This is something else entirely. If it’s anything like the Galileo or the PARCC … those were awful and made no sense because we’ve done [standardized] tests the same way for so long.”
Besides that, Hartley said, teachers are just now instructing students on how to prepare for the new one, because the teachers themselves have only just recently discovered how the test has been changed.
“There should’ve been some early information to help them and us,” stated Hartley.
Although the test is set to incorporate more relevant information, many students are anxious about the new material and the longer essay at the end, especially after three straight hours of testing.
“I don’t like it,” said junior Erin Costa, “especially because, when I took an SAT course over the summer … they only made us take one of the old kind of test and they made us take three of the new ones. The new one is so much longer, and you need a lot more endurance for the new one than you do for the old one.”
And although most students are understanding of the attempt to make the test fair for all and more relevant, it is still difficult for students not to feel like the switch occurring mid-year is a little unfair to the test takers.
“People test differently for the SAT and all tests really,” said Costa, “but they’re just trying to make a test that everybody in the nation … so that’s okay. But it is kind of hard because the test does cost money, and they tell you to take it more than once.”
With the new test quickly approaching, there is only one way to truly find out how the test will look and if it has changed for the better – we can only wait and hope for the best.
By Sienna Wurl