The New Digital SAT
In March of 2023, the first students will be taking the new Digital SAT. The College Board has planned to rollout the test first to international students this spring, followed by the digital PSAT for the class of 2025 in October, and to all high school students beginning in March of 2024. The College Board has re-designed the test to be shorter and more streamlined.
How will the test be different from the old paper-based SAT?
Timing
Digital SAT: 2 hours and 14 minutes
Paper-based SAT: 3 hours
The Digital SAT has a much shorter testing time than the old paper-based SAT. The shortened time mostly comes from the verbal section, wherein students have two 35-minute sections instead of the paper-based SAT's verbal sections, which were 65 minutes (reading) and 35 minutes (reading). The amount of time spent on math is virtually the same as the time spent on math for the old paper-based SAT.
Structure
Digital SAT: Dynamic – stage adaptive
Paper-based SAT: Static – test is the same for all students
Unlike the paper-based SAT which provides the same paper-and-pencil test to all students on test day, the digital SAT will be stage adaptive. For instance, if a student meets a threshold for a certain number of questions correct and correctly answers certain questions (this is related to how the test is graded – more on this in a separate post) on the first verbal section, the second verbal section will contain more difficult questions that allow a student to score up to an 800. If a student does NOT meet the prescribed threshold for the first verbal section, the second section will contain less difficult questions, and the student will not be able to earn above a certain score for the verbal (e.g. 550).
While all students will receive the same level of difficulty on the first stage questions for verbal and math sections, the second stages will be different depending on first stage performance. There are only two possible sets of questions for the second stage: one set that, on average, is more difficult; another set that, on average, is less difficult.
Sections
Digital SAT
Reading and Writing Stages 1 and 2
Stage 1: 27 questions, 32 minutes
Stage 2: 27 questions, 32 minutes
Math Stages 1 and 2:
Stage 1: 22 questions, 35 minutes
Stage 2: 22 questions, 35 minutes
Paper-based SAT
Reading: 52 questions, 65 minutes
Writing: 44 questions, 35 minutes
Math No Calculator: 20 questions, 25 minutes
Math w/ Calculator: 38 questions, 55 minutes
Experimental section (variable number of questions, 20 minutes)
The digital SAT has a total of 98 questions while the paper-based SAT has a total of 154 questions.
Reading and Writing
Students will be given reading and writing questions together in each of the verbal sections, while the paper-based SAT has distinct sections for reading and writing.
Students will immediately notice the major difference between the digital SAT reading and paper-based SAT reading: the new digital SAT offers short passages with only one accompanying question. This will be a welcome change for students who struggle with working memory on long reading passages! However, there is a heightened need for mental agility in order to move from passage-to-passage, and hence question-to-question, quickly. In other words, students will no longer be able to settle down and get into a groove with a passage like they used to on the paper-based SAT, where each passage was accompanied by 10-11 questions. Additionally, the Digital SAT reading passages are more varied in subject and genre, such as poetry and plays.
The writing has become much more streamlined on the new digital SAT. Certain concepts that were tested on the paper-based SAT, such as idioms, homophones, redundancy, ambiguous pronouns, combining sentences, and sentence placement, will no longer be tested on the digital SAT. Grammar, too, is far more narrow in focus: students will be heavily tested on punctuation and verbs.
Question types will be grouped together and arranged in order of difficulty within each question type. In other words, as you move through a group of, say, six reading passage questions, the first question will generally be easiest, while the sixth question may be the hardest. Your next set of questions may be testing Standard English Conventions (SEC) for writing, and the first SEC question will be easy and progress in difficulty to the last SEC question.
Math
One of the most obvious differences with the new digital SAT is that a calculator will be allowed for all math questions. On the paper-based SAT, there is a 20-question section that does not allow use of a calculator.
Overall, the math section on the new digital SAT doesn't look all that different from the math section on the paper-based SAT. The same four categories of math questions (Algebra, Advanced Math, Problem Solving and Data Analysis, and Geometry/Trig) are tested on the digital SAT.
Students may notice that grid-in questions are now sprinkled throughout the section rather than placed as a discrete group of questions at the end of each math section. Additionally, negative answers are now possible for grid-in questions.
Score Reports
Digital SAT: available within days
Paper-based SAT: available within 2-3 weeks
While it's a welcome change that students will have access to their score reports within days after taking the digital SAT, it's a bummer that the Question-and-Answer service that many students rely on to review their test day performance will no longer be available. Additionally, the College Board will no longer have tests released for certain administrations. Typically, March, April, May, and October SATs were released so students could review individual questions and answers. Instead, the College Board will be periodically releasing digital practice exams so students can continue to prepare with new material.
If you have any specific questions about the new digital SAT, send me a note!
