What Parents Need to Know About the New SAT

You’ve probably already heard that the SAT is changing and you may have many questions about what those changes are.

Let us inform you of what’s happening!

The College Board has created a new SAT that will take effect in March 2016. Any 2017 graduates can either take the old SAT, the new SAT, or the ACT. The two biggest questions that many parents have are:

1. Why is it changing?
2. What are the exact changes?

WHY IS IT CHANGING?

The last changes to the SAT were in 2005 and college admission advisors and teachers believed that the SAT wasn’t testing what students were really learning in the classroom. So, the new SAT is being designed to assess the skills that students will need in college today.

The new SAT tests higher-level logical and reasoning skills. The questions on there will be more straightforward and students don’t have to worry about learning specific ‘tricks’ in order to get through the test.

Over the past handful of years, the number of students taking the ACT over the SAT has increased significantly. The new designed SAT will resemble the ACT quite closely in hopes that more students will take the new SAT. The new SAT will also take into account the Common Core Standards.

WHAT ARE THE CHANGES?

SCORING AND STRUCTURE

They are going back to the old 1600 scale (current SAT is out of 2400) with two required 800 point sections for Math and Evidence-Based Reading and Writing. There will also be sub-scores and insight scores for Social Studies and Science. The Essay portion is optional and will be scored separately.   There will be no penalty for choosing incorrect answers.

MATH SECTION

The old SAT’s Math section focused primarily on computational skills. In order to align it to the Common Core Standards, the new math section will focus on problem solving and data analysis and will contain many more word problems. There will also be a calculator part and a non-calculator part.

55 minutes for 37 questions – calculator
25 minutes for 20 questions – NO calculator

Math Sample Questions from the College Board

ESSAY

The Essay section is optional and if students choose to write the essay, they will be given 50 minutes and it is given at the end of the SAT.   Students will now be required to read and analyze a 650-750 word document and then prepare their own essay in response based on the text and also citing facts taken from the original text.

Essay example from the College Board

READING AND WRITING SECTION

This section is now called the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Section and they are now combing both reading and writing into one section instead of two. It will have two parts, the Reading section and the Writing and Language section.

Reading: 65 minutes for 52 questions
Writing and Language: 35 minutes for 44 questions

This will be a multiple-choice section based on passages that revolve around social studies, history, and the sciences.   Students will see tables, graphs, and charts that they’ll have to analyze and answer questions about.

Reading Sample Questions from the College Board

Writing and Language Sample Questions from the College Board