NEW YORK — The SAT® Suite of Assessments will be delivered digitally starting in 2024, while colleges and universities across the country are ditching standardized testing requirements.
On Jan. 25, the College Board announced that the SAT Suite, including the PSAT exams, is going digital with “numerous student-and-educator-friendly changes.” The Class of 2025 – current 9th graders – will be the first ones to take the SAT digitally.
Shortening the test to two hours instead of three, with more time per question, is among the changes. Other changes include, but aren’t limited to, shorter reading passages to reflect a wider range of topics representing the works students read in college, and calculators being allowed on the entire on the Math section. The College Board also states that with the digital formats, students and educators will get scores back in days, instead of weeks.
What will stay the same are the 1600 scoring scale for the SAT and the way for students and educators to track growth across the Suite of Assessments. The assessments will continue to be administered in a school or test center with a proctor present. Students will have free access to practice resources and will continue to be connected to scholarships and the College Board National Recognition Programs.
The College Board has also addressed some challenges that may arise with this transition to digital testing, such as access to technology. Students will be able to us their laptop or tablet or a school-issued device; if a student doesn’t have a device the College Board will provide one for use on test day. When the College Board offered its Advanced Placement exams virtually at the beginning of the pandemic, some technical issues arose during testing. These new digital formats of the SAT Suite of Assessments are designed so that the student will not lose work or time if the device disconnects or loses power.
Additionally, the College Board states that the digital SAT is more secure:
“With the current paper and pencil SAT, if one test form is compromised it can mean canceling administrations or canceling scores for a whole group of students. Going digital allows every student to receive a unique test form, so it will be practically impossible to share answers.”
This is not the first time the College Board has made changes to the SAT. A year ago, in January 2021, the College Board discontinued SAT Subject Tests and announced it would discontinue the SAT Optional Essay by the June 2021 testing sessions.
The College Board piloted the digital SAT in the U.S. and internationally in November 2021, and according to survey results from the College Board following the exam, 80% of students found the digital format to be less stressful and 100% of educators reported having a positive experience.
“The digital SAT will be easier to take, easier to give, and more relevant,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, Vice President of College Readiness Assessments at College Board. “We’re not simply putting the current SAT on a digital platform – we’re taking full advantage of what delivering an assessment digitally makes possible. With input from educators and students, we are adapting to ensure we continue to meet their evolving needs.”
Meanwhile, colleges and universities across the country have paused the requirements for the SAT and ACT or made them optional. According to Fair Test: National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which opposes standardized testing, 80% of the roughly 2,300 four-year colleges in the nation do not have a requirement for the SAT for high school students in the graduating class of 2022. Approximately 1.5 million high school students in the class of 2021 took the SAT, a sharp decline from the 2.2 million students in the class of 2020 who took the exam.
As a result of the pandemic, high school students are seeing an inconsistent landscape of college requirements. However, a College Board survey shows that 83% say they at least want the option to submit test scores to colleges.
The SAT will be delivered digitally internationally beginning in 2023 and in the U.S. in 2024. The PSAT/NMSQT and PSAT 8/9 will be delivered digitally in 2023 with the PSAT 10 following in 2024. More information about the changes can be found at SAT.org/digital.
