More Details Released About the Digital SAT

Today, a group of test prep professionals met with the College Board to learn more details about the digital SAT. Here’s what we learned.

The College Board will not release a new score concordance relating the paper-based SAT and the digital SAT. This means scaled scores will remain the same – and the SAT-ACT concordance jointly released in 2018 should remain viable.

SAT test content will not change but the digital SAT will contain fewer questions and allot more time per question. It’s College Board’s conviction that this is not a test overhaul the way the “Revised” SAT was in 2016. They are still testing the same skills, just in a new medium or platform – which allows modification of the number of questions it requires to assess a student’s performance. Ultimately, this is important for students who might be impacted, as it means they can start preparing whenever they are ready and know what to expect.

The digital SAT will be aligned with state standards for efficacy. This seems to indicate that state contracts (for School Day SAT) are major motivators behind this change.

The SAT Question-and-Answer Service (QAS) will no longer exist. This was expected, given the adaptive nature of the digital SAT, but disappointing nonetheless. QAS is a fantastic way for students to learn from their mistakes on an official exam in preparation for another sitting. We hope College Board will at least follow ETS’s example of giving GRE students a diagnostic report on their performance, which includes info about question difficulty and content areas.

Reading and Writing problems will appear interspersed in the same section. Every question will pertain to a different, brief passage, which will represent a “richer” array of composition styles. This seems to us to represent the biggest design change to the digital SAT. Students will need to read and analyze shorter passages and switch back and forth between reading comprehension tasks and grammar and style tasks. Reading in this fashion potentially requires a shift in strategy – we’ll know more about how to coach students when we see full-length practice tests. Speaking of…

Multiple full-length practice tests for the digital SAT will be available via College Board’s testing platform (and Khan Academy) by end-of-year. That means international students facing the digital SAT in Spring 2023 will need to start using these practice exams ASAP.

The College Board will no longer report on subscores, such as Command of Evidence or Heart of Algebra. Students will get only section scores (Reading & Writing, Math), which will combine into a total score. This was a surprising reveal, as College Board has always touted the amount of info its score reports yield. Perhaps additional analysis around student performance (either individually or in aggregate) will be available to school districts who purchase the School Day SAT or college admissions officials as part of the non-student-facing SAT score report? That’s TBA.