As a result of our ever-changing, ever-modernizing world, almost everything we know has been touched in some form or another by digital technology. From the kiosk at the McDonald’s on Quentin Road to the ability to access books and documents online at the click of a screen, the internet has changed our society in countless ways—so it should not come as a surprise that standardized tests given through the College Board, such as the SAT, have transitioned to digital platforms as well.
In early 2022, the College Board announced that they would be offering a digitalized PSAT and SAT starting in the fall of 2023. In accordance with this, LZHS freshmen, sophomores, and juniors took a digital PSAT on August 30, 2023, administered through Horizon Education.
According to PrepScholar, a tutoring service for standardized testing preparation, the SAT is being digitized “to make the SAT easier to take and easier to give and to make the SAT more relevant.” The SAT’s format and content has also changed. PrepScholar continues, stating that “the digital SAT will be shorter, reading passages will be more concise, questions will be more direct, and students will have access to a wider range of digital tools.”
Currently, my overall opinion of the DSAT (digital SAT) is that I do not like it. Or rather, that I have not warmed up to it, and that the change has made scoring well much more difficult for me. However, I do believe that there are a variety of benefits to this change. Firstly, as the SAT now features shorter passages for the reading and writing sections, students will spend less time reading and have more time to focus on the questions stated. For example, if the question was asking for the main idea of the passage, it is much easier to read and analyze a shorter text compared to a longer one, where there is more room for confusion and distractions. The test itself is shorter as well, with only 98 questions overall, instead of the previous 154. This decrease does come with its benefits, since it allows me more flexibility and time to take practice tests at home and makes it easier to focus during the exam. Secondly, I do agree that the digital SAT is overall more efficient for students. Taking the test on a laptop or iPad is much more convenient compared to having to deal with several paper packets and any issues that might arise from marking in answers for the multiple choice, such as insufficiently filling in answer bubbles or copying over the answer in the wrong row. Further, according to the College Board, new features on the DSAT will include a testing countdown, which will give students “an alert when five minutes remain in the module,” a built-in graphing calculator for both math sections, the ability to mark questions for review, and a new annotations option that allows students to “highlight any part of a question and leave themselves a note.” I believe that these tools are valuable and will improve the testing experience overall. I remember during past PSATs when students who had forgotten their calculators would have to solve problems that would be quite challenging without one. The built-in calculator is made even more important now, given that there is no longer a ‘no-calculator’ section. Marking questions for later evaluation will also be helpful, as it allows students to remind themselves of a certain question they were unsure of or skip ahead to easier questions. The annotations feature is also a considerate addition as it gives students the capability to remind themselves of important sentences and make notes about them. I think these new features will be very useful to students taking the PSAT this fall and the SAT next spring.
Nevertheless, there are some aspects that I like less than the old SAT. While the shorter test is more convenient, it can be a flaw in the long run, because fewer questions means less room for error, and each incorrect response hurts your score more than when the test was 154 questions. I also think that with the change being made official only this summer, I did not have adequate time to adjust to the new format before taking the test. Since I was in 8th grade, I have taken the paper PSAT several times, and thus I am accustomed to the format of the paper test. Now, I only have about two months to practice on the digital format, which is made even more difficult by the addition of school and homework. Lastly, since there is no longer a designated writing and language section, there are significantly less writing questions on the test than before. I find this to be a huge disappointment as the writing section was the part that I did the best on, and this could reflect poorly on my overall score.
However, the College Board has made the transition to digital formats easier with the addition of Bluebook, which is “a new digital testing application that makes test day easier and faster for students and proctors.” Through this app, students will be able to take up to four practice SAT tests, similar to what the real SAT will look like on test days. Students will be able to receive their scores right after submission as well, and see what questions they got wrong and why. Most importantly though, is that the real digital SAT will be taken on Bluebook, so it would be beneficial to start practicing and getting accustomed to the new content and format.
As older and younger students familiarize themselves with the new types of questions and start taking practice and official SATs online, I believe that the issues I have stated earlier will no longer be a pitfall. In fact, I think that overall, despite their downsides, these new changes are a huge improvement from what was offered before, and the new features will help students succeed when taking the test.
